To Verna Marsh
Now you are ashes.
Though also photographs: Cherokee cheekbones,
Jutland jawline, lifting me at
one year old;
in your 20s swimsuit for a 90s
parade;
picnicking with other volunteers in your
Always in the spirit of the moment, but
a bad job it was, telling you to
say cheese:
no society matron you, no debutante;
your mouth and eyes betray a
conscience.
Cinere … cinere
… says her son
as the Italian film woman dies,
all is ashes, yes:
Grandpa’s holdings after ’29,
scrawny hen in every pot, wreck in every
garage,
fascism coming.
Fast forward: the
world is made of quarks,
they say; they want to escape
the twentieth century West
through the ancient East;
they want the new millennium to begin
in 2000, not
2001, to get to it faster; they want
software to brew their coffee and brush
their teeth.
Seagull cries are what make matter,
like social action makes
dictatorships, like
players having money ruins baseball.
But your world remains, in memory.
Elsewhere the victory gardens are gone:
food and fuel are wasted; the national
purpose
is up to marketing; the people get
their news
in soundbites
…
The fox is rising, but the hedgehog,
remembering service to the commons as a
given,
waits for another day.
(12/97)
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