A Pair of Limmer Boots
The life that required custom leather
hiking boots is gone, and woolen
cross-country knickers with knee-
high socks—clothes that used to fit
for things we no longer do.
I bagged them for Goodwill
but you hid them with books
on beekeeping, a boat hook,
and ham radio—not ready
to admit that choices narrow,
that we can’t recalculate our turns
through the world’s dark wood.
You’d sent the shop in Intervale
a tracing of each foot the year
before they stopped taking orders.
The night you crept down the Cog
Railway’s trestle, the Great Gulf
of Mt. Washington behind you,
stars bright enough to glint
from your metal lace hooks—
what, on that hike, split before
from after, like maternity smocks
and baby clothes, or the mirrored
dress I wore when we first met?
People are always creating systems to classify/categorize/pigeonhole individuals, often with little success. Yet I believe I can neatly divide humanity into two distinct groups: those who collect and those who disperse. (I’m of the former category, though I don’t think my wife would be so charitable with that characterization; she might suggest pack rat as far more appropriate.) Still, the dichotomy of these impulses is clear: one contingent is convinced that, at some later time, every one of these cherished items might again be pressed into service, yield new meaning. Members of the other group (far more practical and clear-eyed) not only know when an object’s utility has passed, they can imagine the clearing in a household such unburdening will create (not to mention the possibilities which arise to fill the void.) Joyce Peseroff’s fine lyric not only fleshes out these two categories, she draws back the emotional veil on those seemingly simple choices: what are we ever able to hold onto from our past; and what might we gain from a graceful surrender? Of course, Joyce may well be playing a double game with us: just as she seems to be gently discarding these personal artifacts, she has preserved them in the unroofed attic of a poem. And it’s we readers who might find ourselves reluctant to part with the recollections she’s coaxed us to unbox. Sly, these poets!
Joyce herself has been a mainstay of the Massachusetts poetry scene for decades. Poet, teacher, editor, she’s been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Currently she blogs for her website SO I GAVE YOU QUARTZ (joycepeseroff.com) and writes the poetry column for Arrowsmith Press. “Limmer Boots” is borrowed from Petition (Carnegie Mellon University Press), Joyce’s sixth collection which, I must confess, will not be winnowed from my admittedly-crowded bookshelves.