“Firsts,” “Lasts,” and “Returning in November”
by Peggy Hammond
“Firsts”
I know I rode my tricycle,
we named her Ginger,
off the front porch.
I have the scar.
When training wheels
were removed,
I don’t remember the day;
I remember the wobble.
I know the morning the call
came, the news of cancer.
The world wobbled.
I have the scar.
“Lasts”
That full moon hung heavy
and low, a white fruit
ripe for picking.
I bundled you into
the car, drove you
for a clear view.
In that moonglow, our hearts
may or may not have beat
in time with one another.
That moment may or may not
have been the last time
such a moon reflected
in your eyes.
“Returning in November”
back to the homeplace,
the deep woods of my youngest years,
beyond the old graveyard,
its primitive stones rising like buoys
from a leaf-litter sea.
The creek cuts its own path,
and we follow, you,
seeing everything for the first time
as I breathe memories
sweet as honeysuckle.
My sister and I in the
trailer behind my father
steering the tractor down rutted path.
Trees destined for stovewood.
Chainsaw whine. Childish songs:
someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
someone’s in the kitchen I know.
Here, the stream swims around
the body of a deer, bloated,
mostly submerged. You take my hand,
pull me closer, whisper,
don’t look, don’t look,
as if protecting me,
as if I’ve never seen death before.

Peggy Hammond’s recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Comstock Review, Waterwheel Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Scissortail Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her chapbook The Fifth House Tilts (Kelsay Books) is forthcoming in fall 2022, and her play A Little Bit of Destiny was produced by OdysseyStage Theatre in Durham, NC.