Teddy

There is one fractured day that I can’t quite recall-

One of those memories whose mismatched images

Won’t quite assemble into a narrative,

And to this day, I don’t know quite what to make of it.

I know that it starts with two doors opening up in the ground

In the middle of a crowd of kids, who all step back, and I

Am one of them- breath sucked in.

The doors are big and blue; opened, they are taller than two

Of us, atop each other’s shoulders.

Out climbs a lumbering, sad, and curious clown,

Slowly climbing up a set of stars into the sunlight,

Not donned as well as one at the circus,

But yellow enough, with a painted frown.

We are all mesmerized by his simple magic of emerging from the ground.

Time passes and we disburse- it seems to be a playground.
Adults are playing softball far away enough not to witness

What transpires, but I have my favorite Teddy,

Who never leaves my arms- the one whose orange rimmed eyes

I still recall seeing life in around that time, and who I sang to in the night.

But somehow Teddy ends up submerged in a wading pool

That is the same blue as the doors the clown came out of—

A frantic sense of loss and recovery.

The story ends with Teddy hanging by his ears on the clothesline

In our back yard, and Dad laughing about him going for a swim.

The postscript, some days later, is that we have to perform surgery on him,

Replacing his soft belly with a ridged patch of cloth

Cut from Mom’s worn out old corduroy pants.

He has long since fully dried out, but he’s never been the same ever since.