Susan Daniels Poetry

the escarpment wrapped
my great-aunt’s house in Owen Sound
curled around that small city
like a gentle rock arm
in a loose, casual embrace–
nothing too tight
or showing much emotion in the north

we climbed that rock every summer
hunting snails and caterpillars;
prey suitable for children
to display in glass jars
the way our fathers
nailed deer heads and antlers
over our fireplaces,
but our prizes still living

inside, my mother memorized
faces yellowing in photo albums;
uncles killed and in which war, I or II,
stiff from long posing in uniform
or perhaps with the knowledge
of where they were going
freezing smiles from their faces

and the aunts, hair high
and pulled back from foreheads
so tight their round eyes slanted,
their seamed stockings straight
and starched blouses impossibly correct

was nothing spontaneous, then?
I assume that it was,
but for photographs
and the price of film
there was no playing
on the floor with children,
a casual smile,
a reckless pose

but through those pictures, my aunt
wove a story of smiles and loss
babies born and buried
at 2 months, 22 months, 22 years
from illness or war–
one we have immunizations for now
while the other still devours young
and old both in too many countries

there, in that parlor tinted sepia
matching the photo albums
I sat with my uncle
who never married
and watched the dust motes catch light.
I ignored his raised right eyebrow
that adults read as distance
or sarcasm, and held his hand
with the veins raised on the back
like geologic formations under skin
and listened to his quieter voice

I learned his stories,
which were less of birth and death
and more of the in-between magic;
the miracle of coming home from war,
how his first car bounced sunlight from the hood
and did not have windshield wipers
and was useless in the storm
that dropped snow to the tops of telephone poles
in the 20s.

everything from that house
is tinted in these memories,
like old doilies soaked in coffee or tea
until the dye matches the stain–
ecru, my mother called it

I call it fading.