Still Memory: Poetry response for 9/26

Still Memory

The dream was so deep
the bed came unroped from its moorings,
drifted upstream till it found my old notch

in the house I grew up in,
then it locked in place.
A light in the hall—

my father in the doorway, not dead,
just home from the graveyard shift
smelling of crude oil and solvent.

In the kitchen, Mother rummages through silver
while the boiled water poured
in the battered old drip pot

unleashes coffee’s smoky odor.
Outside, the mimosa fronds, closed all night,
open their narrow valleys for dew.

Around us, the town is just growing animate,
its pulleys and levers set in motion.
My house starts to throb in its old socket.

My twelve-year-old sister steps fast
because the bathroom tiles
are cold and we have no heat other

than what our bodies can carry.
My parents are not yet born each
into a small urn of ash.

My ten-year-old hand reaches
for a pen to record it all
as would become long habit.

                                   —Mary Karr


A dream is a fluidly apparition at first, until it gets where it's going and the dream becomes clear, until the body wakes up, pulling the mind away from the dream, making it hazy once again. Karr's first stanza expresses this when he explains the bed " . . drifting upstream till it found my old notch in the house I grew up in . . ." It was flowing  until it found the old house, then it became clear. " . . .then it locked in place."

Her dream takes her back to an old memory when her parents where still alive, her dad coming home from work and her mother cooking. This is a good memory for most people. In my dreams, sadly, I don't smell. My dreams are made up of sound, sight, and touch. I liked this poem because of the many scents Mary shows. From her dad smelling like crude oil to the smell of coffee her mom has made. To smell in a dream would make dreams even more elaborate, her discription makes her dream sound so.

In stanza seven, the author describes her sister running through the bathroom because the tiles are cold. This is something me and my sisters all experienced. I remember one time when I was little I yelled for my mom to carry me from the bathroom carpet to my room so I wouldn't have to step on the tile! This stanza brought back memories so I related to it well.

The last stanza is the most interesting. I believe she is describing the moment she became interested in writing. " . . . as would become long habit." This line shows that once she picked up the pen when she was ten to record what was happening, she never stopped and became a writer. I can't remember the first time I started writing my own poems and short stories. The last stanza gives reasoning for this poem and ties it all together nicely.