A Poem Where Nothing Happens

Holding color slides up to the window

one at a time,

a morning looking over images my father shot

throughout his life

now saved in dusty carousels.

My mother, slim,

cigarette between her fingers

on a chaise longue in Miami,

my grandfather,

gin and tonic in hand,

gray black hair,

the shamed face of a man

who had lost his job,

dentists at conventions

wearing name tags

and wide ties,

The Vallieres in the Bahamas

beside an aqua blue pool,

The duckling we had one summer,

my sister young and toothless in a handsewn dress.

Behind the slide, a plane flies

miles above,

a speck of metal holding hundreds of people

drinking 7-Up from plastic cups,

staring down from their windows,

a trail of white smoke passing

through my Kodachrome past.

Ray

The loon has four cries, he told me,

I wouldn’t touch the soup

playing a record so I could hear

that smelled of pee and unwashed hair.

the tremolo, the yodel,

He couldn’t hold his spoon,

the mournful wail across the still water.

the violent shaking of his hand

This was us talking. Us on the porch.

splattering the broth onto the vinyl tablecloth.

Him smoking his pipe,

No thank you, my young daughter whispered

me listening to his record.

when offered a roll,

Our chairs faced the lake,

all food untouched, a game show blaring.

a storm moving toward us,

I steadied his hand with my own.

wind and whitecaps.