Gretel in Berkeley

by Eve Sweetser

The crumb trail is gone

food for the birds of time

and there is no return

to childhood 𔃉 we have come

too far. From mothers' arms

to stepmothers and slaps

to witches' ovens, and then home

another way, to places not the same.

Where do they come from, then,

these paperclips?

Who dropped them one by one

along the sidewalk?

How can I

pick up these shiny frail

signposts for homeward travel —

following their trail

would I retrace whose steps

to what long-dusty backfiled memory?

I need no track

to lead me to the paper forest now.

For you

I'll let them lie.

But fellow-tracemaker,

do not rely

on scavenger-prey or gravel.

Old photos, pencil-ends, and all the Library

of links to Other Places —

beware their Janus faces.

These strewings cannot tell —

no toes or heels — which way

to home, or to the cookie house?—

they do not say.

What clues have we

but our own and each others' memory?

When visible paths

are only yarns unravelled

set by one of us Gretels as a key

for clingers to her labyrinthine past,

where do we go for futures, at the last?