We’ve been collecting stairs for years
Stairs and the notion of stairs
Build with them like children do
Just like playing with blocks we will
Paint them with heart ideas with generational hope
May yet reach the somewhere else we had in mind
We wanted so little in those days
Between the bingo and
Collecting funerals
Houses subside and the
Screen door doesn’t fit quite the
Hedge apples grow
Thorn and poison in the way that they have
We collect these things
Comb the rivers and
Creeks the margins of change for things like
Glass bottles to exchange for bait
Catch other things that we want too and all of my heroes
Were good at fileting fish
And we were in the living room
Gathering stairs in boxes and
Pressed flat in books and
Trying not to hide them
Trying not to feel guilty
© Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.
A lifelong resident of San Francisco, Shuck lives in the Castro district. Her poetry collections include Clouds Running In, Rabbit Stories, Smuggling Cherokee and Deer Trails. Shuck also teaches at the California College of Art, in the diversity department, and has taught at San Francisco State University. She has volunteered in San Francisco Unified School District classrooms for two decades. www.kimshuck.com
