In the guesthouse.(Poem)

 
   In the guesthouse 
 
   I. Long exposure, 1892 
 
   All of them dead by now, and posed 
   so stiffly, in their sepia Sunday 
   best, they seem half-dead already. 
   Father and Eldest Son, each dressed 
   in high-cut jacket and floppy tie, 
   never get to sit in the sitting room. 
   They stand to face a firing squad 
   behind Mother and the little girls-- 
   themselves bolt upright on the sofa, 
   hands at their sides, their center-parted 
   hair pulled back, two rows of rickrack 
   flanking the twenty buttons down 
   the plumb line of their bodices. 
 
   And here, discovered alone downstage 
   and slightly to the left, the boy-- 
   such a beautiful boy. Although 
   they've tried to make him a little man, 
   upholstering him in herringbone, 
   you can see him itching to mn out 
   with his hoop and stick, happy because 
   even at this moment, when 
   nobody could be happy, he knows-- 
   in the tilt of his blond head, the frank 
   time-burning gaze beneath his cowlick-- 
   that he is the most loved. 
 
   2. Flappers, 1925 
 
   I'm in the guesthouse some days before 
   focusing on another portrait: 
   professional, black-and-white, composed 
 
   to lend a spacious dignity 
   to the one life lived behind each face. 
   Again, the date's approximate; 
 
   I'm guessing from the arty look, 
   the flapperish, drop-waisted frock 
   and ropes of wooden beads on the wife 
 
   of--yes, it has to be. No more 
   the poster boy for posterity, 
   he's a commanding forty. The cowlick's 
 
   still there (although now he slicks 
   it down with something), and he still 
   cocks his head to one side, a hint 
 
   of flirtation, exasperation--what?-- 
   in the eyes he trains at the camera 
   as if he'd give me what I want 
 
   if only he could emerge now from 
   the frame. We stare in mutual 
   boldness while his wife's long profile 
 
   is tendered to the child between them. 
   One girl: a modern family. 
   I speculate a little son 
 
   was lost to the great flu; even so, 
   this fair-haired Zelda in a bob, 
   ten years old, would come to seem 
 
   enough, the image of her father. 
   The smile high-cheeked and confident, 
   the shining eyes, the upturned chin-- 
 
   people matter more now; they'll die 
   less often, now that the Great War's over; 
   everyone's allowed to sit down. 
 
   3. Wheelchair, 2000 
 
   The jumbles of grinning faces jammed 
   together at birthdays and Christmases 
   in color photos around the house 
   don't interest me. 
 
   They're merely ...