Nancy Haiduck


Legacy

When my uncle says I look like Aggie,

my grandmother, who had straight

brown hair that never turned gray,

like mine, I see it.

 

When my uncle, whose father ran away

with a beautiful woman from Boston,

rues how Aggie laughed at his sister, 17,

nine months pregnant, and tired from picking

beans and pulling beets out of the earth,

gave her a spade and sent her to dig up

potatoes, I taste it. 

 

When my uncle recalls Aggie summoning

them from her straight-back chair by beating

her cane on the hardwood floor in the house

on Water Street, I hear it. 

 

When my uncle swears they hated the man

Aggie married the week I was born

who sold Aggie’s things when she died

so his sister had to bid at a public auction

for their mother’s brooch, her sewing box,

the porcelain vase their hands were slapped

away from, I feel it.

 

When my cousin calls to tell me my uncle

died and she’s saving his fishing rods,

paint brushes, tin cans of nails, a dozen

hubcaps, telephone books, tool box,

a cloth bag of marbles, iris bulbs

in a sack, I smell it.