Pictures on the wall covered in dust.
Faces framed to impress rare guests,
Dressed to invite conversation.
My grandmother young, poised and demure,
wears her best off shoulder gown.
Her husband composed in a stiff collar projects
a dignified vision and solemn manner.
Enshrined by the late owner as a sign of respect, hang precariously from yellowed plaster.
Her house a tattered dress
worn by more than a few generations,
full of good will and solid intentions.
Rooms furnished in early seventies chic,
adorned with the occasional antique,
threadbare and in need of much attention.
Shades of unmet expectations
mock her fate from nooks and crannies.
Nicknacks of imagined value, saved for posterity.
Degrees from higher educational institutions displayed with pride,
useless now.
Wall posters advertise her artful designs.
Work done and awards won
rest idle on shelves and end tables.
An uncurated museum
of ancient generations carefully researched,
no longer holds a living interest.
Stores of unrealized ambitions and incomplete projects stacked around for an eventual archaeological excavation.
Photos on a flash drive
flip past my eyes;
one old family photo after another.
Memories recorded and no longer relevant.
Attempts by the late owner to catch and hold
that fleeting instant, long ago,
The fair haired child
smiled on by family,
as she played the guitar,
and performed her ice skating routines,
The leap, the fall, but now the dance is over,
Frozen in death past giving
As mountain snow dissolves in spring rain.
Walking the hall
Checking her bedroom,
Looking for necessities for those still living
No thing speaks.
Silence crowns tomb-like space and
Every item carries dead weight.
Nostalgia noses its way into my mind,
Creates distraction,
Raises questions of different ends:
What should be saved,
what would it mean,
What value remains after her loss
in mementos of the lost
And a beautiful life left in dust,
never mine.
THH
5/23/25
Image
And her holding onto old parts of her life
Storage bend
Thoughts Have Hands 