This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from
the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poem is "Attic
Experience" by William Ford of Iowa City. It was said once that you can’t
go home again. Or as in this poem’s case, you can go home if by
home you mean a dust covered past, nostalgia, and memory that stays vital and
alive only in your imagination.
Tipton, Iowa
It’s the wan hand of nostalgia
That makes you praise
and seek out your oldest flip-flops.
In the heat of deep summer
You rise into the small light
Of a gothic-windowed attic—
A mid-fifties sprawl of things
Still only partially covered,
Nothing strange expected,
Everything evened out
In the dust you’ll leave yourself in
Regardless of what’s touched.
Yet, strange it all is,
The oak-solid poses, unsmiling
In that rose and picket world.
The odd starched collars
Unopened to the wind,
The yellowed letters in a hand
Finer than any since
‘And in a language that uses time
As though in love with a sentence
That just won’t end.
For a while you rock
In your father’s split rocker
Pounding the baseball glove
That’s cracked so badly
It won’t take oil.
"Attic Experience" by William Ford originally appeared in Voices on the Landscape:
Contemporary Iowa Poets published by Loess Hills Books of Farragut.
Biography
William Ford lives in Iowa City, where he currently teaches for the Distance Learning branch of Kirkwood Community College. He has also taught at the University of Iowa, Coe, Lycoming and Southwestern Colleges. Recently his work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Poetry, the Iowa Review, Poet & Critic, Southern Humanities Review, Tennessee Quarterly and the jazz poetry anthology Second Set (Indiana University Press), He has been a popular speaker at area colleges and gatherings sponsored by the Des Moines Poetry Festival.