#MIDDLEBURY
New Jersey
Craig Morgan Teicher
I was afraid the past would catch up with me,
would find this new house too like the scarred
old childhood home. But it hasn’t yet. A tree
casts soft and gentle shade over our green yard.
I feel forgiven all the sins I didn’t commit
for long minutes at a time. What were they?
I can’t now think of anything wrong with me – I fit
in these rooms, can mostly agree to each day.
For long minutes I don’t even blame my mother
for dying, my father for spending years in bed.
My little traumas are just souvenirs of other
lives, of places I might have once visited.
I’m mostly a father here, a husband, barely a son.
The big sun rises early here, as I do, with everyone.
About this poem
“After over a decade in Brooklyn, N.Y., city life just stopped working for my family, so we moved to New Jersey, where life has been working very well. I grew up in the suburbs and had a rough time, so I was scared moving back to the suburbs would freak me out. It hasn’t, but I’ve been writing lots of sonnets as a way of thinking it through.” – Craig Morgan Teicher
About Craig Morgan Teicher
Craig Morgan Teicher is the author of “The Trembling Answers” (BOA Editions, 2017). He works at Publishers Weekly, teaches at New York University and lives in New Jersey with his wife and children.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Craig Morgan Teicher. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
