BPR 51 | 2024
The Aunts
They pose past the past,
my not-so-maiden aunts,
twice- or thrice-married, rarely
without glass of gin and a smoke.
They saunter through memory
like Monet’s ladies at Trouville,
forever stiff in silk and crinoline,
parasol in hand, one reading
a paper, one staring at the sea
or, having closed her eyes,
dreaming of somewhere
in unruly ruffles of cloud
or clouds of ruffle.
The problem lay not in parasols.
Every portrait is a portrait of tedium.