Chipmunks--1/22, edited 2/12

Another excerise from CW poetry about a childhood experience.
-db

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Chipmunks

I woke with a purpose in the room with the slanted floor
in that house where my tiny body would stir
6 years old
6 a.m.
(early bird) my father’s daughter.
Like a canary I would hop downstairs
hopping over sleeping cousins
and across the cold tiles of the kitchen
taking a handful of peanuts from the green glass antique jar
like alms to feed those whom I loved.

scratchscratchscratch
against the concrete (like mother said)
and they would run to me like devotees to the child-god.
They were bold, climbing my church clothing room slipper.
Little bandits, Russian spies
complete with masks and fur coats.
The rain would cling to the spiderwebs
as the springs would plan their next attack
on which foundation they would choose to crumble.

Of course, nature quietly came to claim it
My mother cried with grandma’s peonies
drooping their heavy bouffants
like southern belles in mourning.
My two aunts and five uncles paraded through,
taking bits and pieces; relics.
The glass bottles dusty on the windwsill, sweatshirts with bottle rocket holes,
the afghans and paintings my mother had done in high school.
The gauzy pink curtains floating in the bedroom
where my grandparents must have kissed.

At eighteen, I returned to the porch
And scratched a peanut against the concrete
The grass had choked all but a few peonies
and my cousins had swallowed pills and swelled with pregnancies
the youngest tipping back tequila at age sixteen.
The chipmunks hid, settling for acorns.