The Shelter Series: Martha Rhodes

On reading Peter Orner’s  “Never Childhood to a Child: On Reading Marianne Boruch during Covid-19”

I think of Halloweens past, the darkest, most thrilling and chilling nights of my childhood, walking with R. so bravely past the Lowell estate on Fox Hill Road, the trees allowing semi pine-obscured views of Blue Hill, which was to us the universe’s tallest mountain (think: Skunk Hour‘s, “a red fox stain covers Blue Hill”). We walked holding hands, toting our trick-or-treat bags, R.’s father a good 8 paces behind us though I don’t think we really knew that, or allowed ourselves to know until we were “older” and annoyed by his albeit discreet, whiskey perfumed presence. We were watched yet in our minds we enjoyed absolute independence as we turned right onto Farm Lane and left onto Pleasant Valley stopping to chat with each house’s kind occupants.

Today, the roof of our small NYC building provides a safe haven. Some light, some air, not a soul watching us (all of our neighbors’ blinds are down) as we walk back and forth toward north and south parapets, our current horizons, knowing that each step brings us closer to, if not a Milky Way, the day when that vast black cloud above yields to the sun.