Archive for the ‘1983’ Category

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1983-03-12 My Great Aunt Nell

Saturday, March 12th, 1983 

                  My Great Aunt Nell
         I’m time tripping in a very different way tonight.
         My Great Aunt Nell McGee was over for dinner
         and I pulled out the old boxes of photographs
         that I was never able to face
         after my mother passed away.
         Mixed there were my mother’s collection
         and my Great Aunt Mame’s.
         Things that ran from Rose and I three years ago
         to my Great Grand Parents
         Pennsylvania farmers and Irish immigrants.
         Even now I sit among these beautiful people’s
         pictures, long gone.
         But when my Aunt was here it was different;
         Thru her eyes I saw my mother at 17
            young and fresh and pretty
         and my Grandfather as a young blade
            with wit and intelligence
               engraved so clearly on his face
         Followed brothers and sisters
            thru births and deaths
               thru first-hand knowledge
                  and things just heard
         She put names to faces fifty years gone
            and I felt them as they were
         I saw my Father, briefly,
            some ghost image who came into
         and out of my Mother’s life
            in a camera’s blink of time.
         I saw myself as little Chris is today
            when my Grandfather was old
         and I saw my Grandfather young
            with a rebel’s spirit
               clearly on his face
                        12 Mar 1983
                        San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1983, Rose | No Comments »

1983-03-12

Saturday, March 12th, 1983 

         All these photograph faces swimming bye
            moments captured forever
         then…now.
            They laughed at the camera
         so alive, and yet so frail
            compared to these paper traces
               they’ve left.
         Each one I throw away hurts.
            I think, that with a motion,
         I may be disconnecting the last memory
            of someone.
         Someone who loved,
            whose blood flows in mine
         a lifetime of experiences
            gone now
               because no one remembers their name.
         I threw away a weathered envelope,
            circa 1920, whose contents had been lost
               in the photograph box’s general melee
         and I remember there was written on it
            ‘Via con Dios’ is someone’s handwriting.
                              12 Mar 1983
                              San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1983, Aunt Nell, Family, San Juan Capistrano | No Comments »

1983-03-12 – Rosemary; my mother’s sister

Saturday, March 12th, 1983

All these photograph faces swimming bye
moments captured forever.

They laughed at the camera so alive,
and yet they were so frail
compared to these paper traces
they’ve left.

Each one I throw away hurts.
I think, that with a motion,
I may be disconnecting the last memory
of someone who loved,
someone whose blood flows in mine
someone with a lifetime of experiences
gone forever now…
because no one remembers their name.

I threw away a weathered envelope,
circa 1920, whose contents had been lost
in the photograph box’s mess.
I remember there was written on it
‘Via con Dios’ in someone’s handwriting.

And then there was Rosemary; my mother’s sister.

I felt grief when I read this child’s card,
who is dead now these 40 years
when she writes from the hospital
that she’ll be home soon
in a child’s scrawl.
But she never returned.

Barely begun … and then done.

And when I drop this card
into the trash,
washed away forever.

I threw that card away three times
and took it back again.

12 Mar 1983
San Juan Capistrano

 

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1983, Catalyst2 | No Comments »

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