AUNT ANNE'S TURN

     My first substantial collection of poems was UNCLE GEORGE:Poems of a Maine boyhood. It was well received and I had enjoyed producing it, both the poems and the wood cuts that illustrated the poems. When my cousin told me he would give me the collection of diaries kept my George's wife, Anne, my mother's sister,  I was elated: here was a possible source for another collection. They did inspire poems but I think you can see as you read them why they did not inspire a collection. As the first poem tells you, the diary began a year and a month before my birth.

          Aunt Anne Begins Her Diary

Jan. 1, 1925: decided today to keep a diary.

So there will be a record

good or bad of this passing life.

Will I have anything to say?

It may be enough if it

makes me remember, tomorrow,

the trivia of today.

Can I call what I do “something”?

Writing may be more important

than what I write about.

A list of unpleasant things —

   Work on Saturday

   Sewing tickets at the laundry

   Cold weather

   Mr. Kardish

The order of the poems is, as well as I can remember, in the order of composition. They were sometiems years apart which accounts for the repetition.

              The Diary

The twenty years fit easily

each in one slim booklet. 

Aunt Anne gave equal weight

to each item with hardly any 

lines to read between.

George and Bobby caught a fish.

Bought dress material at Porteus.

Lizzy writes from Florida.

George died today.

No notice of Uncle George’s death

beyond these words as terse

as brittle as rose petals pressed

between the pages.

George died today.

Perhaps that was 

all there was to say.

         Aunt Anne’s Diaries

Seventeen slim volumes

as spare as winter trees.

Warm for this time of year.

Lizzy wrote from Florida.

Weather. Names only

of neighbors who called.

Bought material from Porteous.

George’s new teeth don’t fit.

Shopping lists. Threads

of a life worn thin.

We let the furnace go out today (May 15).

George and Bobby caught a fish.

The blank remainders of each page filled

with wash worn silences hung out to dry.

Tue. August 14. Lizzy died

half past twelve today.

The record ends. A life so nearly spent

no surprise remains.

Went to ride with Bill in AM.

Watched old yr out and new yr in.

Tomorrow will be no surprise

even if the sun won’t rise.

Sisters

Aunt Anne had come

to live with mother

for the summer. The operation

had been delayed

too long.

I read the short flat

line-a-day entries

in Aunt Anne’s diary.

Very hot.

Delano and Olive visit.

Lizzy had a bad day.

How well these almost blank 

revealing pages

echo the snow-bleached fields

outside my window. (I’d been

many miles away.)

How well they echo

long empty afternoons,

those hot breathless

August nights

they waited through.

Lizzy died: 2PM today.

I was miles away.