Souvenir From the Gone World
The blue letters on the worn canvas
of the carpenter’s apron
read
Deppe Lumber Company
Phone 223
Baraboo, Wis.
Two pockets: one for nails
and one for star charts
or whatever one needs
at the top of a ladder
in that mythic place: Baraboo
of the river ferry,
Baraboo of the Ringling Brothers,
Baraboo of swirling Devil’s Lake.
Years ago,
before traveling to my father’s hometown
I asked the address
of his childhood home
and was told, It’s on Second Avenue—
You go down a little hill,
then half way up a hill — ask
at Deppe Lumber, they’ll know
the house number.
This was after Mother’s death
and Dad was 90, he was living
in a smaller place,
he was giving things away,
slowly divesting himself
of house numbers
and phone numbers.
He said, You need to forget
unimportant things
so you can hold on to what lasts.
Turns out Deppe Lumber had closed
a decade ago.
Still, Dad would have been able
to find the homeplace:
going down a little hill
then half way up a hill
proved just right: we matched
the snapshot he gave us
to the house.
Two pockets:
one for forgetting,
one for memories.
My father remembered
sitting on those front steps
in the evening, his father
newly dead, and hearing the trumpeting
of chained elephants
from the circus grounds.
They let us give them water
when they came to town.
They were a few blocks away
but when they cried out,
it felt like all Baraboo
was weeping.
for Kate and Joan Newmann