1955
Four brothers and a sister
squat on overturned buckets
around a basement drain
snapping beans, listening to a woman
with a sunshine voice
sing a song on the radio
about falling in love.
Behind them
mason jars sit in the musk
of homemade pine shelves,
dented pots on an antique stove
bubble with tomatoes and rhubarb.
Sauerkraut fermenting
in a chipped crock from Austria
mixes a sweet sour scent
with mold in the stone walls.
This tableau has been staged in memory.
It doesn’t tell how they fought,
how deals were made:
you scrub them down,
you snap the tips,
you break them into equal parts.
It doesn’t tell
what they sealed inside,
why the youngest boy, even now,
crimps his mouth
to hide oversized teeth,
why the girl poses sideways,
fearing laughter and her image
on the other side of the lens.
It doesn’t tell
they crouched like that
all afternoon in July heat,
forced into a circle
they would never comprehend,
scooping handfuls of wet beans
from chipped porcelain tubs,
snapping segments
of snicker and shadow,
dividing time so fast
they never noticed
their wrinkled hands.