Ken Craft

Maine poet Ken Craft’s work has appeared in Spillway, South Florida Poetry Journal, Pedestal Magazine, and numerous other journals and e-zines. He is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Reincarnation & Other Stimulants (2021). You can visit him at https://www.kencraftauthor.com/ .

nos*tal*gia

nos*tal*gia (Gk nostos homecoming + algos, pain) \\ n. 1: memory poured through the
colander of regret. 2: Old Lyme, Connecticut, yellow cottage, kitchen redolent of cabbage and
root vegetables. 3: dry pine needles from piled-up Christmases, some under the baseboard
radiator, one on the window sill’s lip. 4: February dawns, the smell of newsprint, the dashboard-
lit shelter of your Dodge Dart as I dashed from the car’s heat to the cold handles of storm doors.
5: the White Owl cigarillos you bought so I could smoke riding shotgun to the Cape. 6: your
open purse below the edge of restaurant tables catching pats of butter, squares of jelly, packets of
relish, mustard, ketchup. 7: rosary beads wrapped around thick, arthritic fingers; a bedroom wall
crucifix, dried palms threaded behind Jesus’s back; confidence in St. Anthony’s ability to find
your glasses, the TV remote, a lost dollar bill. 8: your prayers from the same pew beside the
confessional box that held me like a host breaking in its mouth. 9: the swinging censer circling
your casket; the Medieval smell of incense; smoke dropping its pail deep into the well of my
eyes.