The antique cards from my great grandmother,

the photographs of ancestors I did not know,

so much regal furniture, I sat in a closed off

parlor, quiet in a King George chair, looked
across the room at the matching couch,
 
the grand organ, the gold trimmed tall mirror
 
with marble at its base, hung full length
 
between tall windows formally draped. 
I loved the quiet in this room, the history I

never understood. The organ no one played,
 
out of tune, a museum for far away relatives
 
in England or Holland, mother’s side
of the family, who tried to stay wealthy

but exposed to the elements oxidized
 
in a slow decline, till it wore thin this family

chain, clear to inevitable death.
So much no one remembers, only two chairs

left, reupholstered, and the mirror, yes, the

mirror, now on sister’s wall in Philadelphia,
 
no longer with its marble stand, but it hangs 
a view to see ourselves, how we have walked
 
through to this other side — some of us — who
 
would be us, long disappeared, those still here
 
with traces in our blood, on our walls, in the
pictures we grow older and more distant
 
every decade — this rusty chain still present —

binding like a cross, there is no escape, no matter
 
the life we live now.
Julene Tripp Weaver is our Poet in Residence for March.


Previously: Ordinary Essentials, and How I Came to this World.