My grandfather, 1969, Budd Lake, NJ |
Last week's poetry prompt from Dimitri Reyes intrigued me greatly.
This, my grandfather, in his Sunday best:
a cigarette dangling from its holder,
a tattered suit, a worn Italian vest,
with me at his side, decades less older.
He does not hold my hand. There is no rest.
He lectures as we walk, points my shoulders
toward a butterfly he displays to me
along the shores of Budd Lake, New Jersey.
This, a back country road, is my classroom:
milkweed, honeysuckle, red columbine,
hummingbirds, spotted touch-me-nots in bloom,
blue robbins’ eggs, goldenrod, dandelions.
My grandfather names them for me, assumes
I will remember that sparrow, that vine,
the chicony, those edible lilies,
the songs of mimicking catbirds we see.
These have all vanished for me.
I live in the suburbs, reminisce now
about ancestors. One Sunday, I walk
the Hackensack riverbank in a drought.
During the golden hour, a gyring hawk
directs my gaze to a sun-kissed bough
where a crow blinks back in silence, stalking.
This, I know, is my father’s father’s song
of what is past, or passing, or to come.
"Varry and Kate," my grandparents. Photo by my father. |
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