My Great Aunt Nell— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
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
Archive for the ‘1983’ Category
1983-03-12 My Great Aunt Nell
Saturday, March 12th, 19831983-03-12
Saturday, March 12th, 1983All these photograph faces swimming bye— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
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
1983-03-12 – Rosemary; my mother’s sister
Saturday, March 12th, 1983All 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 —