Mamma's Kitchen

Mamma's Kitchen

Mornings streamed through windowpane dust;
gleaming sun bolts jabbing night's ghosts.
My sister and I, in our quilt's warm embrace,
would awaken to sounds of Mamma's kitchen
rattling up those cold wooden steps
as if clearing its throat of the dark.

The back staircase was so creepy and dark.
Its dry, creaky voice coughed up floor dust
as we galloped down those narrow, steep steps.
Past tricksy shadows of hovering ghosts,
we'd fly straight to Mamma's kitchen
and the warmth of morning's embrace.

Nothing could match Mamma's loving embrace.
Her gentle arms melted our fears of the dark.
Music and humming filled the kitchen,
her slipper clad feet, always sweeping up dust.
Mamma would swear she was dancing with ghosts
and our giggles would quicken her steps.

With aromas of bacon drifting up steps,
our tummies were gripped by hunger's embrace.
Those growling beasts proved stronger than ghosts,
so Mamma would tame with syrup, warm and dark,
poured over our biscuits of floury dust.
Our emptiness was quenched in Mamma's kitchen.

Daddy seemed hidden in Mamma's kitchen,
behind the newspaper, from the front steps.
In work clothes, sometimes speckled with dust,
between sips of hot coffee, he would embrace
a cigarette, under his moustache so dark,
its smoke floating upward, like dancing ghosts.

Then would come time to forget about ghosts,
so said the grandfather outside the kitchen.
The clock, a handsome piece, polished and dark,
chimed his warning as we jumped down front steps.
We zoomed with lunch boxes in our embrace
off to school, feet kicking up dust.

Sometimes now, when I lie in the dark, I drift back to those steps,
and I'm haunted by ghosts of Mamma's kitchen,
with memories I fondly embrace, of a childhood long turned to dust.


(The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the six initial end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi.)