Dave took this picture when he came in to check on our house in Sept. 2005. This is the train track at the end of our block that separates us from Greenwood Cemetery. I keep thinking back to those days in part because we have been watching Treme on HBO and in part because it's easier to go there than to sit and watch the gulf fill up with oil.
They are tearing down a house just down the street. We've watched so many bulldozers come in and level homes. We sit next to a gutted house, across the street from a gutted house, and behind us: they have finally torn down and prepared a lot for rebuilding. It's been five years and some people are just starting.
When they tore my mom's house down; they broke open the roof to find the wooden bassinet that I used as a baby sitting in the attic. She had forgotten it was up there. The bulldozer scooped it up and set it down at my mom's feet. I think about that image a lot. The cradling of the bassinet in the yellow bucket, and the hoses pumping water, and the silence after the storm, and the trees holding our memories in their rings.
I can almost feel a poem about that bassinet in the bucket of a bulldozer. Potent imagery here.
ReplyDeleteand, the trees holding our memories in their rings. Do share should you write these.
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