Très Riches Heures
All this
familiar: the New England part
of me. Frost aprons the lawn at the inn
where the
outdoor kettles start; their smell of hot
oil and turkey
deep-frying, rises through
the vestry’s
yellow frame. A rule: when you
stroll these
woods always wear an orange hat.
Past the
brewery steam, and those thronged
bottles on the
porch (light ale, Old Slippery Skin)
—almost a winter
genre scene, but mild—
I cross the
White River, low in its banks.
Shank of the
day. The bulb, its tunic frayed,
stays
sound. My mother’s turning eighty-five;
her spooling
gait is frail. Like Shakespeare’s
blessed
mole who cast
copped hills towards heaven,
she made the
dressing mound. And napped—
that gate of
her ribs still opening, not wide.
One candle
singed the wallpaper; then smaller
lights sang
out across the red-floored room. The ox-
pasture grows
pond-deep with dusky shadows.
All of us—our
bones—afraid of the dark.
Elizabeth
Biller Chapman