CREEK ROAD GANG
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Janice Ewing: 2 Poems
copyright 2009
Cleaning Out the Garage
In a corner,
dried out paint
crusty old brushes
in coffee cans
Against a wall,
frayed beach chairs
a broken umbrella
dusty rafts
In a moldy cardboard box,
green plastic shovels
hitched to yellow buckets
a blue sandsifter
At the bottom of the box,
those toy milk bottles
with colored lids
that snap open and closed
My daughters loved to
line them up like test tubes
along the turquoise edge of a pool
filling and refilling them
with small careful hands
In Memory of Ginny
Your love was endless,
an ocean
whose gentle waves
twinkled in the sunlight
Your faith was deep,
a canyon
stretching for miles
between sheltering cliffs
Your kindness was wide,
a meadow
bursting with wildflowers
in the summer sun
Our memories are warm,
a fireplace
we’ll sit beside
through the long winter
In a corner,
dried out paint
crusty old brushes
in coffee cans
Against a wall,
frayed beach chairs
a broken umbrella
dusty rafts
In a moldy cardboard box,
green plastic shovels
hitched to yellow buckets
a blue sandsifter
At the bottom of the box,
those toy milk bottles
with colored lids
that snap open and closed
My daughters loved to
line them up like test tubes
along the turquoise edge of a pool
filling and refilling them
with small careful hands
In Memory of Ginny
Your love was endless,
an ocean
whose gentle waves
twinkled in the sunlight
Your faith was deep,
a canyon
stretching for miles
between sheltering cliffs
Your kindness was wide,
a meadow
bursting with wildflowers
in the summer sun
Our memories are warm,
a fireplace
we’ll sit beside
through the long winter
* * *
Biographical Note: Janice
Ewing grew up in the Bronx but has lived her adult life in Philadelphia
and its suburbs. She is a writer and adjunct professor. Her earliest
memories include weekday afternoon trips to the library and Sunday
mornings with the NY Times spread all over the living room. She enjoys
reading and writing poetry as ways of understanding the world. She
has a husband and two adult daughters, all of whom love to read. See Janice's poems in our September 2009 issue and in our October 2009 issue.
