In the photo

For my father

You scowl in
the photo on
the bureau.
there are times you smile, too.
Today,
I decide to clean the dust
that collects around you
never making a sound
your silence said much.
You would have been
95 tomorrow and as lucid
as at twenty
or when at four you
shielded your older sister from
the overreaching clamp of
death. if only you
could shield me now
the blood lines still
forming around us
I still carry the gypsy
urgings you left for me and
the miraculous rumor
that one sky
fits all.


(c) jayne lyn stahl