Unspoken
Because my father looked away when talk rose from the table
and my mother spoke so much of daily things
I turned my face from him and shut my ears to her what did I know
he fostered out from home to home until sent off to war
she tending through her teenage years her father
who coughed up coal-stained froth streaked red and black
their earlier lives they banished without telling
now too late I want to ask them how they were
before they grew to be the strangers I abandoned
as in two photographs I found today
a boy in overalls straw-hatted holding his grandmother’s hand
on the meadow of the farm he had to leave when she died young
a girl in a festive parlor brother cousins parents grandparents
smiling raising their cups beneath the stations of the cross
beyond the window a green slope blurring the smudge of an open pit
mute things unless they whisper if only because they were kept
how silence was the way my parents had of holding back
the pain of all they lost that they looked back to
***
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