GAIL TIRONE

The Slow Nights of Childhood

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Memories of long summer nights

Safe in my grandmother’s kitchen

sitting on a cool radiator

watching the world’s mysteries unfurl

on the street beneath her window

safety represented by a large aproned lap

wedged between a covered broiler and 

a fruit-laden table

 

Hot static time

like in a Hopper painting

the way you’re always 

waiting for something to happen

 

A time when excitement and anticipation

were defined as waiting for the ice cream man

the slow nights of childhood

 

When a long day was peeled off the blister of summer

only to reveal a long starry night

with Good Humor at its peak

the slow days and nights of childhood in Brooklyn

 

When time was more something to be passed

than savored

when we hadn’t yet developed the need to savor it

when time was so limitless we couldn’t fathom

it ever being a precious resource

in need of conservation

 

When the sun went down on faded red bricks

formica and plaid cloth dishtowels

(long before Retro rendered brick and formica chic)

 

When grandmothers lived forever

forever presiding

providing comfort, stability and 

ricotta sandwiches fortifying us

to confront the confusing adult world

 

The quintessential grandmother in a kitchen in America

emblem of nurture, continuity and calm

snapshot in the landscape of a human life

 

The slow nights of childhood

that felt like forever —

 

Time suspended like an old family story

told and retold until it becomes myth

time suspended like a broken kitchen clock

still hanging on its yellowed wall

stopped

time suspended like a radio that won’t turn off

that won’t turn off 

 

Time suspended like an old photograph

closed in an album

in a rented storage unit

in another city

half a continent away.

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