Letter from Shuyak Island, Alaska

To my grandmother

I liked to sit at your dressing table.

Whiskey-colored perfumes smelled of dust.

The photograph beside the mirror showed

a serious face, a man in pince-nez

who died the year I was born.

Nights, lying on the fold-out couch,

I was surrounded: mahogany, Chinese lamps,

and paintings of forests

boxed in by big gold frames.

Nature felt confining,

closing in as you grew old.

This summer I sleep on a barge,

stare at spruce and sky

as I walk on this island which hasn't changed

since our Celtic ancestors invaded Ireland.

1909 you were twenty-two.

I picture you in Boston

practicing piano scales

the day Mount Augustine-the volcano

I see from the beach-spilled lava into the sea.

Perhaps you saw it in the paper, perhaps

not, concerned with music or men or money,

gold-rimmed plates and goblets of your future.

If you thought of any other world

it was Europe, Strauss waltzes,

a honeymoon tour before the war.