The Library
The
faces of the Grays--
jaws
set against indulgence,
skin
wet from working
the
crop-tending heat--
stare
down like stars,
shine
down from their frames
on
deep shelves of books,
along
Mother's walls.
My
Great-Grandfather's dirty hands
dig
ripe sprouts from hard leaves.
The
gray stalks in the photograph
jut
antiqued against white sky.
His
thick arms under rolled sleeves
are
bones in the earth now.
He
fights the weeds bent on killing a harvest.
Work
left undone,
leaves
empty mouths,
say
weary eyes
flashing
down from their perch.
He
worked, and it was good.
And
Mom's cast iron frames,
set
high on her cases
clutch
these photos--one showing
Great-Grandmom's
piece of fatback
buzzing
in her heavy skillet.
Another:
her open button box.
Mother,
just a girl,
sorts
white from gray from black
little
circles.
Nearby,
another frame:
two
little girls in the kitchen window.
I know
what they're watching.
I've
seen it, too: their Daddy, my Poppop
with
hands jammed in his flannel pockets,
Even
today he will oversee the flames that reduce
the
trash in his garden barrel.
The
fire's tumbling is
frozen
just off the cardboard.
Winter,
1955, penciled on the back.
And
on the great black bookcase,
above
the fire-red sofas,
my
husband's German nose and Italian hair
appear
in the portrait of our newborn--
our
child's a toddler now, asleep in Mom's grandson room.
It
is Thanksgiving night.
My
folks, siblings, their spouses, the older children
play
Pictionary upstairs.
But
down in the library,
the
guest bed is open.
My
husband is soft in his undershirt.
Thinning
photographs surround us in the dark.
Blacks
and whites of my Great-Grandfather
pausing
his tractor in the field. Great-Grandmom
paring
beans from the earth, her skin
hanging
from her solid bones. Grandpop
and
his brother behind the garden,
smoking,
laughing from their bellies. And my Mother
in
her lilac sweater swaddling our son.
My
husband and I, from a faster world,
will
deliver another boy the next summer.
He
will grow into his forefathers' strength.
And
their fortitude will sparkle and glow
from
the sides of his ocean-blue eyes.
Catherine
Zickgraf is a former (American) Northerner excited about growing her roots in the red Georgia clay. She intends to
pursue her MFA in poetry once her little boys, her frenetic sources of poetic fodder, get a bit older.
