NEW FEATHERS ANTHOLOGY
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Picture
Photo from Boston Public Library
In Quarantine
Don Edward Walicek


The ancestors come
down the hallway

as if every evening
were a family gathering. 

​Devotion to calendars
defined by work
 
and ancient religions
has kept them 
 
lonely and quiet
in crowded cemeteries, 
 
locked out by fading 
cut-out obituaries,
 
forgotten in frames 
high on the living room shelf
 
that they dreamed of
as a future altar.
 
Common sense restricts 
our knowing, 
 
our comfort, 
memory, laughter
 
and affinity,
to annual pauses, 
 
and fosters this insistence 
that all the steady creaking, 
 
sounds loud and animate
that wake me at night,
 
must be moisture,
just nothing
 
trapped beneath
the hardwood floor. 
 
Their footsteps coat me
in this long interruption 
 
with comfort 
and precious company.
 
The voices of my great aunts
fade with the pills,
 
but last night they
convinced me 
 
to try on my good shoes,
to pack a suitcase.
 
Inside it I see
familiar-looking infants,
 
two or three
unknown sisters
 
awaiting 
the journey home.
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