I am grateful to have a poem in Silver Birch Press’s ONE GOOD MEMORY series. When my friend Phyllis first told me about the series, I immediately thought of this memory of my father … place can be so powerful. Thanks to Silver Birch Press for publishing “Walking 5th Avenue”:
Walking 5th Avenue
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
I am again fifteen
with my father,
my first trip to New York,
and he is not yet
in life-changing pain,
and we stare
in store windows,
eat street pretzels
and look for sales racks.
I don’t know yet
how he will hurt
too much to walk,
how even standing
will become impossible.
No, in this memory
we are walking
and laughing
as if we will forever,
as if there won’t
be a morning
when I wake in New York
almost four decades later
and reach to call him
and thank him
for that long-ago trip,
only to remember
he can no longer
answer the phone.
All day, I hear his laughter
as I walk. All day,
I feel his hand
reaching for mine.