Week #10—Improv

Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina

                        by Jack Gilbert

There was no water at my grandfather's

when I was a kid and would go for it

with two zinc buckets. Down the path,

past the cow by the foundation where

the fine people's house was before

they arranged to have it burned down.

To the neighbor's cool well. Would

come back with pails too heavy,

so my mouth pulled out of shape.

I see myself, but from the outside.

I keep trying to feel who I was,

and cannot. Hear clearly the sound

the bucket made hitting the sides

of the stone well going down,

but never the sound of me.

         Six Months on Pembroke Road

                                                     by Pauline Rodwell

There was no indoor toilet at my grandparents’

when I was five and would need to go during

the long, English winter night. Down the stairs,

through the kitchen, past their bedroom into

the damp night air. To lift the latch on

the wooden door of the outhouse. Would

shiver till my teeth chattered so loud my mother

standing outside the door would hurry me to finish.

I remember her voice but not my own. I keep trying

to hear it, to know if I even made sound. How quietly

we tiptoed back upstairs to bed, closing our

ears to the ghosts of her childhood,
whispering from the walls.