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.
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