Revisionist
Saturday morning in August: more time
to add some leaves to my family limbs.
Among flea-market offerings, I lift
a sepia photograph of someone's
mother, or even a jaunty old aunt
who wintered on the Cote dAzur, drained men
like olives, drowned them with cocktails.
"We could be related." There's a county-
width between this weedy yard and my front
door, but blood will travel. For two dollars,
I claim the mink-eyed mystery woman,
shove her into a canvas sack on top
of argyle socks, Elvis watch, army boots.
Tomorrow I'll invent their history.
"Mom!" She quirks a brow, shakes her perfect curls.
"You drag home the weirdest stuff." Yes, I do.
There's the fig-leaf fruit dish, with naked Eve
spraddled at one end as a pink handle.
Once I lied that it was my eccentric
cousin's dying wish I should have the thing.
I've also called up the ghost of a cowboy
grandfather, whose engraved horsehead buckle
magnetized me from a pawnshop window.
Before crows lost their human speech, I swear
we were partners on the Babel
work crew.
I still gather too much glitter; my desk
retreats beneath hand-knit scarf, ivory brush,
intaglio snuff box, conch shell bookends.
A cowhide Bible with a broken spine
exhales dust mites and unfamiliar news
wrapped around people I would like to own --
Mehitabel, Charity, Zachias,
Truth and Evanda -- easy to purloin
them for myself. Nobody will regret
the loss of ancestors with such dry-bone names.
A See-Hear-Speak-No-Evil chimp trio
giggles behind battered antlers. I should
accept their message and quit pretending
but Id still wander my desert and sport
false tales, proud as a Bethlehem donkey.
If only my child knows the difference,
who can uproot our secondhand tree?
Copyright
© October 2005 Brenda J TateVisit Brenda J Tate online
Click here to return to The Library