Sticky & Sweet

I have lingered in such a place
where it’s humid & hot
where surfaces are sticky
& sweet, where people are tough
but hospitable & friendly
where insects careen & then rest.
When she was a girl
my mother’s father
abandoned his family
for such a place.
Sticky & sweet… pain–
I think she forgave him, finally.

~Andrew Shattuck McBride

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“Sticky & Sweet” is my August 1st poem for the postcard poetry project. I used a contemporary card of Mount Shuksan from Heather Meadow. I mailed the card to Anne Marie in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Blessings to Anne Marie and all, Andy

P.S. Patrick, Sally’s father, left Ohio and his family for New Orleans. Later they reconciled; he took her to the New York’s World Fair in 1939. As an adult I’ve visited New Orleans; while there I tried to get some sense of my grandfather and imagined what he had seen in that city in the 1930s.