baby shoes 1952
Originally uploaded by lesliefedorchuk.

Photo Dated 1959

for Leslie Fedorchuk

You show me the photo
of your parents in the mint
green bedroom, of your mother
smiling at this moment
to capture history and grace.
You're there too, 7 years old,
red hair sprouting like wild
red wheat, as if you already
know the craziness this life
will demand. Beside you,
your father stares off the
frame, as if he suspects
some horror no one else
can see, a clanging wrench
in the works -- that same look
of Lowell's, hell's laureate:
black glasses snapped on,
lip curled, forehead brunt
as the mind disrupts
in a wild chop -- genius
led astray by holy rapture
and shame.

*
You tell me how your father
taught at the jesuit school,
how one day he spilled his
lecture into the hall, how
the holy ghost reached inside
his Russian soul and filled him
with a fury of words, the prayer
of contrition shouted at jesuits
until someone called your mother
and she begged these men
to help her collar her husband,
how their faith withered
among the books and lockers.
She marched past the unbelievers
and picked up the man
with the brunt forehead
fighting the good Catholic fight
in a slurry of syllables.
"C'mon Hank," she said,
"let's go home," grabbing his arm
and leading him to
sanctuary.

*
You tell me this story of the woman
smiling in the mint green bedroom,
smiling and standing tall in the faith
of things, smiling and standing all her life
beside the man who strains against
the clanging, how for 40 years
she wrestled with his blessed rage.
Now the noise has died
and she wants to start her life again,
this time list in a big house
in the Michigan woods. She has plans:
to buy a new washing machine
and dryer, to build a wrap-around
porch so she can watch deer feed,
to build a guest house -- one for each
of her eight children on her hundred acres,
to give them each a big Buick.
She wants to fly her daughters to London
and Dublin and Venice. She wants to sail
a slow steamer to the far east,
and most of all she wants to tell her story
like a child in one long, glorious
breathless sentence and I only hope
that each of us when we meet her
simply listens.

David Martin