What Else Did He Make?
I don’t remember the way
to the first mall in the South Shore
to the first McDonalds in Weymouth
or the drive-in movie on Route 3A
But I remember the footpath
through the Japanese knotweed
that we called rhubarb and ate with sugar
behind the old Coast Guard Station
on the way to a friend’s house
and the stone concrete jetty
we dried off on after swimming
that we never thought of
as a boat launch
I remember feeling indignant
about a wart on my knee
and the first time I was stung
by a yellow jacket
I remember riding the brakes
going down hills on my bicycle
and choosing the black cowboy hat
over the white one
and the first catechism question
out of a list of sixty-nine
that we memorized and recited
Who made you?
and the flowers in the tall grass
that we didn’t know the names of
and the secret that I kept
about eating purple crown vetch
I remember the grass fire my brother started
and the spankings we got for sneaking cookies
the linoleum floors and the crystal fluted doorknobs
in the bedrooms that were cold in winter
I remember the lies I told in confession
because kids have no real sins
and if they did they wouldn’t remember them
What else did God make?
God made all things
I always said
“I stole a cookie”
________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United
April 25th, 2021 1:15 am
What a delightful recount of your past. It was beautiful to read and recall similar childish ideas and understanding that I had too.
April 25th, 2021 2:06 am
Lovely to read! An interesting mix of things I can identify with and other things not in my own childhood. But somehow being a child is much the same, I think, regardless of particular experiences.
April 25th, 2021 2:23 am
Autobiographical poems are wonderful to dive into, especially childhood memories that are different to mine. Yours is cinematographic, Colleen, and vivid. I especially love the image of
‘…riding the brakes
going down hills on my bicycle
and choosing the black cowboy hat
over the white one’.
April 25th, 2021 4:46 am
I really enjoyed going along with you on memory lane
April 25th, 2021 10:43 am
Remembering our sins has a way of haunting us for years, but so do good memories. Which will we choose?
April 25th, 2021 11:16 am
A lovely bouquet of memories. I especially enjoyed the making up sins for confession!
April 25th, 2021 11:21 am
I love the structure of this poem. I love how I can see all the happenings, as if I were there tasting that stolen (or not) cookie. These are my favorite lines: “I remember the lies I told in confession / because kids have no real sins / and if they did they wouldn’t remember them”. I love them because they are so very true (and necessary to know).
April 25th, 2021 1:24 pm
How utterly precious … in the best sense of the word ‘precious.’
April 25th, 2021 3:18 pm
This was a delight to read. There was a bit of overlap with my own childhood memories too. I remember getting in line for confession and wondering what I ought to tell the priest too.
April 25th, 2021 11:53 pm
this is a beautiful poem of childhood, and of life and how it shape us. i love the awesome details in the poem, chuckle and groan at some of them. i would not forget the linoleum floors of my own childhood home. 🙂
April 26th, 2021 3:37 am
I loved the lines remembrance and forgetfulness. Nice.
April 26th, 2021 10:30 am
Lovely, fun memories. I’m aware of churches where parishioners do confessions but didn’t know children had to confess as well.
April 26th, 2021 11:29 am
Catholic confession for children is after the age of 7 and after you take a catechism class and memorize those 69 questions. But perhaps it’s changed since I was 7.
April 26th, 2021 8:07 pm
And little things like the wart on the knee become mounds terribly high, worrisome too, made of flesh and skin. Colleen, old age skin tags are really bad, wait until you get to be my age. I loved reading this.
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