Apparition

Apparition For several years a photograph of my grandfather, my mother’s father, hung on my living room wall There’s no date on his portrait; family lore says it was taken shortly before he deserted his family. He was a handsome man, easy with women, or so I’ve been told. In the photograph he’s dressed formally for a country man: a dark suit, a white shirt, a crooked bow tie. I knew him as a broken old man, pacing around the back yard fence like an animal in a cage, talking quietly to himself. One evening long after his death, as I sat quietly, contemplating his portrait (a casual close reading), a ghostly hood emerged, covering his face, eye-holes roughly cut, his bow tie and suit disappearing beneath a white robe. My grandfather no longer needed Sunday clothes.