Over the Hill to the Poor House by Kelley White

It’s not on the shelf. I kept it in the antique
bookshelf, that might have been my mother’s
(or your father’s), the one that locked with
a tiny key and was missing one of its glass
doors, (which made the lock after all ineffective)
and held a six-volume set of THE THOUSAND
AND ONE NIGHTS and early Jules Verne
and a dear pink pocket copy of A CHRISTMAS
CAROL with Tiny Tim in a small, gilded oval
frame on the cover. You remember your mother
reading it to you, so it may have been a picture
book, but I think it may have been music,
a song, a strange lullaby, for I find images
of sheet music with ornate flourishes, golden
trumpets at each corner. Or it might have been
a movie. A movie we saw together. The old couple
put out of their home. Their children unwilling
to take them in. Oh, those selfish children! Those
selfish grandchildren! And I have lost both shelf
and book. And forgotten the music. If it ever
existed, any of it, at all.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.