Katie Hartsock
Another Serenade for Rhina
You woke up, ninety-one, in the mood to make
pork-shoulder soup. Your table, by eleven, praised
how you arrange things: salads, sandwich trays,
a sense of feast. You lifted the chardonnay—
a three-liter jug—and poured: “The more I drink,
the stronger I get.” Though you turned to tea by two,
and I had the tour—greenhouse, translating room,
your basement writing desk, and, each on their plinth,
Alfred’s sculptures, still chiseling the air.
I loved your hallway. Loved listening to you there,
surrounded by pictures. I saw your grandmother
who makes me cry when I teach your sonnet where
she never does. I felt the giant idea
that poems are real. I saw you with a rose in your hair,
and I asked. You had three serenades that summer.
The Late Twentieth-Century Afternoon, A Grandmother
She trusts her dog (no stake, no line) and feeds him well.
She’s comfortable (look how she stretches) in her body
(her arm behind her head), and knows she still looks good
in her color block bathing suit and silver hair cut short,
her legs still long (toes strum the air). She loves how the 80s
let her talk outside (the cordless phone is new) on a lounge
cushioned in the 70s (that flower pattern).
She sips Pepsi, and one of many grandchildren
has just learned how to sit (steadied at her hip
in a white diaper). She’s just smoked, or just thought of smoking
(Marlboros & lighter in the grass). She reads what book?
(The spine’s illegible.) She’s taken off her watch
to swim in the aboveground pool, a gold watch of night shifts
clocked by. She hears something old for the first time again
(her lips are taut)—is she on call, getting called in?
Some infidelity? Some sister running late
with the linguini salad? All will be well or it won’t.
There are five cars in the driveway, the oak tree shades a playhouse,
and the RV’s spare tire cover boasts three owls and the name
of her town behind her. Sitting there (the empty chair),
someone had a vision of her opposite angle, picked up
a camera (a camera!), and, saying nothing, made it click.
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