Today's poem is by Barbara Hamby

Ode on Paradis and the Longing for a Place that Never Was
       

My sister and I are talking about our childhoods,
                which have the same cast of characters, but differ
so much that it's hard to believe we shared a bedroom
                for so long, and she often recounts how I threw up
on her, which I don't remember and neither did our mother,
                but my sister believes it so it's part of her story
but not mine, and I'm the only one who remembers our parents
                being in love or living in France in a little village in Alsace
called Paradis, and on our honeymoon, my husband and I
                drove through but I couldn't find the house, and twenty
years later, my mother and I made the same trip, and she
                couldn't remember where the house was either,
until she recalled a man who'd walk by every afternoon
                and urinate right across the street from our house,
which was kind of weird, but there was a lot of anti-American
                feeling, and when my mother remembered the guy peeing
that led us to the house, toot sweet, as she would say
                in years to come, along with mangez, the only French
she picked up, and our French landlords didn't want children
                in their fancy parlor but made one exception at Christmas,
and my mother created one of her magical holidays with a tree
                that dazzled, and my sister does remember how December
was a gorgeous time though she doesn't remember that one
                or the snow piled high, or how cold it was all year,
and when I think of that time, the Welsh word hiraeth
                comes to mind, or the longing for a place that never was,
and maybe that's what Paradis was, with fresh baguettes
                delivered every morning with milk and cheese,
and my mother so young and pretty, and there was a fireplace
                in the room next to the kitchen, where she fried chicken
and made pot roasts, and she would call us in from play
                with, Mangez, kids, which my sister remembers
from three years later in Virginia, De Gaulle having kicked us out
                of France because according to my mother America
wouldn't share the nuclear secrets with the French,
                and that's a big secret to share I'll grant you,
and France had just come through two wars which messed up
                the landscape, but time has healed those wounds,
and you see a lot of nuclear power plants, too, so someone
                let those secrets slip, and sometimes I wonder
if Paradis even existed, because my mother and father
                are both dead, and I'm the only one left
who remembers my mother slathering those baguettes
                with peanut butter no French child would ever eat,
and the little picnic place with merry-go-rounds in the water
                of the lake, and when my husband asked a man
who lived in Paradis about our landlord either Monsieur Iray
                or Siray, because my parents had forgotten, he said,
No Americans ever lived here, so now I'm thinking it was all
                a dream of paradise that my little girl's heart
made up out of nothing, even my young parents in love
                and the fire in the dark cave of their hearts.

Copyright © 2025 Barbara Hamby All rights reserved
from What the House Knows
Terrapin Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission