Long Wool Coat
(Church lady 1891, Indian Boarding School, Phoenix, Arizona, late October)
I stare down at my shoes. I stare straight ahead, down brick walls, narrowing
to the street lamp at the end – its light cast on a flurry of snow.
The air is frigid, smells of coal. But no warmth is in this alley.
The bricks, stone cold. The alley, narrow.
I look down at my shoes, the leather stiff and new, still polished against
the melting flakes. No scuffs or scratches tell of the long road already traveled.
The shoes are new. My coat is stiff and scratches at my neck.
Wool, itching from shoulders to ankles. Bunching against my skirts.
My hands, newly gloved. Shapely, black gloves not serving to warm me at all.
I move briskly, my breath trapped inside the careful veil,
hanging from the brim of my black felt cap.
This too, intended to protect me from the elements; the crisp Midwestern air.
But it hangs stiff, already shaped by my breath,
vapors freezing against the fine gauze.
The veil is a film of ice by the time I near the front porch.
The porch, wide with many columns, but lacking in rails.
Along its unfinished edges sit the children,
lined up, in rows, blankets wrapped round their shoulders.
Hair still in tight braids, trimmed in ribbons and otter tails.
Skin, shades of dirt and stain. Some faces, streaked in tears.
My lashes blink to stave my moist eyes from freezing.
Because, now, I am seeing things.
Now, I see the children there, before my eyes as if frozen by the box camera-
The same children, but now changed, conformed.
All One Long Face, One Hair Cut – Short.
Bangs where there’d been feathers.
Eyes wide with questions, or narrow with anger.
No blankets. No skins.
Grey coats. Shoes that do not fit.
I see their future.
There is nothing I can do to keep change away from these children.
Me, a puppet in new shoes and kid gloves.
Nothing I can do to stop this process.
But I do not have to volunteer myself a cog in the daily wheel.
I turn away, risking frozen eyeballs,
but live to tell against it.
READING: Crescent Moon , Lincoln, NE.
OTHER PEOPLE’S GHOSTS-©Barbara Salvatore, April 2012