The Beginning of Storytelling

the past embeds itself
in the present,
a spectator, the keeper
of the family album
where i find my grandmother
as a young woman and my
mother holding me up for a photo--
we lived on Featherbed Lane,
a landscape of buildings
Featherbed Lane remains a photo
where my mother pushed a carriage--
my father told me four stories of how
the lane got its name--
each story a possibility
Featherbed Lane became a bedtime
story, a magic incantation, a place
to learn the power of naming