They said in ancient Greece and Rome and such
locales—and maybe everywhere, I guess—
that household gods—say, ancestors’—would look
upon us in the home, as from an urn
with ashes in it on a mantelpiece—
or even absent ashes or the vase.
But I have my Italian grandfather’s
old grooming scissors, made when things would last,
and use them still when trimming eyebrows back
or other facial hair, and think of him
gone now these fifty years. And turning sixty
is the small stool, a fold-up job, a child’s,
with slatted top, just big enough to fit
a mug and magazine: my German “Pa”
mailed up my brothers and me each a stool
the Christmas I was five. And under each
he’d etched our nicknames in clean, slanted caps,
the very penmanship the envelopes
of letters sported, like Roy Lichtenstein’s
captions or thought balloons. JIMINY CRICKET.
Both objects, after years of stalwart service,
are silent as the spirits of a home
in Greece; larēs or penatēs, in Rome.
2024-01-01