Dim House, Bright Face

She still cries over that dead child,

and for years would bring him up

with strangers who came to the house.

Unashamed to weep freshly, she took again

the cheaply framed school photograph

and passed it from hand to

hand. The boy's open gaze into that forward time,

laden then with calamity

because it seemed, to the minds of those unwary

visitors, that he knew his silence

had another meaning, one that entered

theirs and caused those moments to almost

make a sound they each

withheld.

So she softened his ongoing future in her heart

with their unreceivable comfort. Took

back the photograph and put it

in the drawer, as if to shield him

from their inrushing eagerness

to hear of those other faces on the mantle,

the ones who can't know yet what living