|
Friday I had
a “yard sale”
in my house;
sold my belongings
and my soul
for much less
than you’d expect
to get for them.
I said “Open at Ten.”
People piled up by nine
in cars
they watched me run
round and round
sticking numbers onto things
I had had since long before
the divorce.
It said “Open at Ten”
in the window,
in the ads—
I had no idea
so many people couldn’t read
—though you hear about that
on the television
I sold first thing
to a hard-bargaining Hispanic.
I opened early:
Buyers swarmed in like mosquitos
to feast on what was left
of my life,
snatching things
I had never thought
to put away,
rushing to ask
“How much?”
faces triumphant and flushed:
The grandmother I never knew—
pretty and prim
in her wedding dress,
hair swept up smooth
above a calm and confident face
|
before Montana
10 kids, and death
by high blood pressure
at age 54.
(A face framed in gold,
like a treasure.)
The psalmbook
belonging to her husband,
my grandfather,
frail and gray
who loved me for myself
gave me the pen in his pocket,
and died when I was three.
(Its black leather cover
fits in your hand
like a prayer,
has a cross on the front,
and is all in Norwegian.)
Eight wheat-haired children,
two tall parents
—like bookends—
bunched before a sod prairie hut,
buttressed by a wagon, a plow horse,
Lutheranism, and two farmhands.
(Framed in plain wood,
satin smooth to the touch.)
The black-and-white photo
of a man with green eyes
sitting forward and fierce
on his polo pony,
mallet raised, as if to say
“Wait!”
(A plain frame,
white as coffin silk
or the clouds of heaven.)
They came at me,
clamoring, clawing, and clutching
at everything precious
I own—
and offering me only
money. |
