Performed by Val Cole.
POEM:
My beloved Great Aunt Ruth
Fed her children good gray truth.
Great Aunt Lisa, whom I prize,
Raised her brood on bright red lies.
Filthy cupboards, cockeyed doors,
Spotted carpets, sticky floors,
Rancid odors, saggy plaster. . .
Lisa’s house – what a disaster!
Aunt Ruth’s dwelling – narrow, smaller,
Repudiated Lisa’s squalor.
Here, a thorough search, I trust
Would not have found one speck of dust.
At Aunt Lisa’s splayed old manse,
I learned to sing and learned to dance
And shamble after rare perfumes
Through littered, smoky, dusky rooms.
Lisa, sprawling, shouted, “Sport.
I hope you’re not the god-damned sort
Who simply can’t abide a lie.”
To which I said, “No, Aunt, not I.”
At Aunt Ruth’s my name was Lad.
Aunt Ruth talked with Mom and Dad
While her children (she had two)
Did the things they liked to do.
The older, Brick, thin as a taper,
Worked the crosswords from the paper.
Sue, his sister, did her nails
Or practiced, at the keyboard, scales.
And while the grown-up talk droned on
I would stretch or scratch or yawn,
Or sit beside my cousin Brick
And listen to the hall clock tick.
Lisa’s family, on vacation,
Traveled to some foreign nation.
Lisa’s oldest, Crazy Harris,
Told me they had been to Paris.
“Not true,” said one sister, Nina.
“We went down to Argentina.”
Another, Mabel, yelled, “Peru!”
I’ve no idea which one was true,
But Harris lumbered to his feet,
Waved his hands and shook his seat,
And with a sort of filthy glance
Did a comic Can-Can dance.
While I, in league with cousin Mabel,
Tangoed ‘round the kitchen table.
Brick and Susan both attended
Camps their pastor recommended.
In later years, Ruth still displayed
The braided bracelets they had made,
A sampling, also, or assortment,
Of their prizes for deportment,
Telling me, as great aunts do,
I could win such prizes, too.
“Work hard,” she said, “and never lie.”
And I said, “Yes, Aunt Ruth. I’ll try.”
After I was graduated
Time, for me, accelerated.
This job. That job. Wife. New schooling.
Babies bawling. Babies drooling.
Busy me, I lost the trick
Of keeping up with Sue and Brick.
Bikes and braces. Little League.
By the time my kids were big,
Except for Christmas cards and such
Lisa’s three and I’d lost touch.
So I was shocked when from the blue
Who shows up but Lisa’s crew,
And after pleasantries had passed
(“God knows,” they said, “when we met last”),
Harris, with his whiskey breath,
Told me of their mother’s death.
I attended calling hours.
Great Aunt Lisa, banked by flowers,
Looked like some cherubic sleeper
Who had cheated the Grim Reaper.
At the house, the food and liquor
Sparked to life a little flicker
Of that fierceness without measure
I had early learned to treasure.
Falsehoods, lies, inventions, fable
Flew from Harris; flew from Mabel.
Great Aunt Lisa, in their telling,
Still resided in that dwelling.
Laughter, stories, jokes and din
Wouldn’t let the truth sink in.
Then, down to beer, the whiskey gone,
They shouted, “Put more music on!”
And punching out our cigarettes
We danced a dance with castanets.
The hearse that bore Aunt Ruth away
I followed on another day.
“Thank God. . . Thank God her death was quick.”
So said Susan. So said Brick.
They’d come to town to give to others
Things that once had been their mother’s.
Not her carpets. Not her jewels.
The kitchen gadgets. Garden tools.
The stuff you’d call the bagatelle.
Things they figured wouldn’t sell.
Susan’s lately written me
To say she’s on the faculty
Of Harvard, or perhaps it’s Yale.
Harris, I’m afraid’s, in jail.
Nina’s found a brand-new diet.
She’s doubtful but she plans to try it.
Brick’s a genius CEO.
On and on and on things go.
In honor of the good gray truth,
I named my first-born daughter Ruth.
In my old age, she cares for me.
Blankets. Broth. And steaming tea.
And when the days are warm and dry,
When evening’s colored up the sky,
When a slant of mellow light
Suggests the coming of the night,
She calls for me, and she and I,
On our rambles, we’ll stop by
The narrow house of Great Aunt Ruth
And listen for the hymns of truth.
Good Ruth. My Ruth. – Well, just the same,
Lisa is her sister’s name.
And Lisa’s visits – random, hectic,
Come with battle. Come electric.
Brief. That’s as they ought to be,
Or else they’d be the death of me.
And yet I beg, before she goes,
She dress me in my finest clothes
And, neverminding rain or sleet,
Drive me to Aunt Lisa’s street
Where, unbeknownst to daughter Ruth,
I shuffle off my clothes of truth
And, naked under vicious skies,
Dance in praise of pretty lies.
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