Verse
Coleman, Mary Ann & Vito, E.B. de & Westerfield, Nancy G.
Mary Ann Coleman Photographs, laves An old photograph at the beach. Mother, ocean in sepia. Caught in your long-legged bathing suit you wanted the bathing cap off but the photographer's brows...
...Years later he ties inland, f~ractufed, near the limbs of ancestors...
...deVito Ilomething in You Something in you: a tilt of head, lifts a veil on the half-forgotten view of another you...
...Father wanted to ge t on with it...
...only this second glance Into the old collection suffices, remarking Again the datedness of your dress and hair, Mother, photographed four decades past, And the fume of my father's long since Burnt-out cigar...
...Thus I honor: with dustcloth And balm for the book's leather cover, As much of yourselves as is left Lingering in a last sidelong look from the pictures, Beloved father, dear mother, the hand-written Names binding us strangers together...
...Another photograt~h, You smile at the same insistent sea, age streaming from your face...
...Not one hair escapes its confinement...
...Vanity and conscience tugging at the ligaments of the spirit, you never flinched...
...How stalwart you waited, Mother, while he was reduced to ash, the long Glowing cigar of himself, praying no &mbt Some...
...Around the edges of the photographs waves simmer on land's margin...
...Before the migraines came, a thorn crown on your pro'feet head...
...The family plot swells fecund with spring Too far away for any to visit On Memorial Day...
...Your hair takes, qa..the gleam of milk...
...maternoster you knew of your own, The urn already chosen scrolled over With its Greek-key design...
...Sea frotlL surfaces of days before his voice shook the house like machine guns from an old war...
...Nothingness Is what the key opens, and the prayers You lined out for us: honor thy father And mother...
...Like Bonaparte exchanging one island for another, like Harpo Marx with, somewhere in his background, the tiny woman with a half-sized harp and Ernest Jones, recognizing suddenly his new home to be almost a replica of the house where he was born, something in you can make me see the absurdity of Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again," when each day in some unlooked-for way, over and over, it is shown you cannot keep from going home...
...17 January 1986:25...
...Caught in your long-legged bathing suit you wanted the bathing cap off but the photographer's brows thickened...
...His bald eyes, his granite teeth, king of his own sarcophagus...
...Nancy G.Westerfield The t~ldlbmm Hold still now, mother and father, While I wipe your pictures: the ones With each other and then with us, The daughters who dust now, each In her proper house, the family faces...
...Your eyes as green as malachite set in ornamental ibis, Father played the curator to your beauty...
...E.B...
Vol. 113 • January 1986 • No. 1
