Contributor: Carl "Papa" Palmer

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The store bought balsa birdhouse
brought by his grand-girl today
hangs on the same bent rusty nail

hammered in their backyard tree
for the handmade house her
mommy made forty years ago.

Two terra cotta flower pots
one upside down atop the other
held in place with preschool glue.

Remnants saved in a special place,
yellow pencil perch, some shattered
shards of clay displaying initials

etched by his three year old
daughter preserved forever
in this old man’s nest of memories.


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Carl "Papa" Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway VA now lives in University Place WA. He has a 2015 contest winning poem riding buses somewhere in Seattle. Carl is a Pushcart Prize and Micro Award nominee.

MOTTO: Long Weekends Forever