Reginald Gibbons
'The Sleighbells fade . . .'
The sleighbells fade, runners
crush snow, cross the uneven plain
toward green-black hills
a mass of loss and silence.
Thus my grandfather
watched the officers depart
c. 1890, then turned
and went back into the kitchens
where he kneaded dough for their bread.
He could hardly have foreseen
his own death
twelve thousand miles west,
the upstairs room
that stank of wood-glue, old coins
and rancid broth,
the nearby freeway down which bathers
drove to the Gulf of Mexico,
the same clouds
that flapped and folded overhead
as he spat into the flour.
Page(s) 21
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