II
In the photo,
A panoply of smiles
And fifties makeup.
I miss the first generation
Who once lived within blocks
Of each other
And passed on
Late in the last century.
I could not imagine them
In this one, sitting zombie like
In front of screens
And zoning out what ran
In front of their eyes.
The second generation,
Grown humorously old,
Calls out my greed, an ache
for a home that is no more.
How selfish I am, to want them
To stay, to buffer time
And a wayward universe.
Depression, World War II –
They fought their battles.
In the photo, they stand,
Smiling wide,
Victors given peace
For a short space.
My mom got itchy
And my dad helped her
Rid herself of the long train
Which trailed on the Hall floor
And shadowed her steps.
In a photo
they head out
In the car, obligatory
Cans flailing,
The sign misspelled “maried”.
They’ll live in the city,
Suburbs, city, suburbs again,
Have two sarcastic children
Who distrust the very air
They all breathe,
But who somehow manage
To extract meaning
From the new unwieldy, dysfunctional
Millennium.
And if you see them stooping
In a recent photo
As they stand.
In the South Jersey driveway,
It’s a disguise.
They’re really flying, like sea birds,
Over water one hundred miles north
As the Sound and the River
Greet each other
And the waves from each
Fan slightly salty air.
A city hovers into being
In music that some say is lost
But which you can hear easily
On small radios
Held to the ear
When you listen between latest night
And the edge that flickers summer in,
Almost but not quite morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment