Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

from My Aunt

77 JAmes l Aughlin from My Aunt Most mornings at Robin Hill When I was living there on the Third floor, that was before My first marriage and when the Office of New Directions was in Her converted stable, she would Summon me to her second floor Sitting room after breakfast and Sit me down by the fireplace for the Daily monologue which usually Went on for at least an hour, Without interruption for I wasn’t Expected to say anything, just to Listen and absorb her wisdom about Life, of which there was a large Supply. This sounds very boring But it wasn’t; it was endlessly Fascinating. How had nature or Some divine agent packed into This little woman (she was my Father’s sister) such an intensity Of feeling and such a capaciousness Of spirit. She would have been in Her sixties then and there she sat In her Chinese silk peignoir At the little table by the window That looked out over the gardens (She had attended a horticultural School; in those days young ladies Were not sent to college). There, She looked out at her beautiful gardens, After she had finished her breakfast Which consisted only of one uncooked Egg which she downed in a gulp. There I was, slumped in an easy Chair (I was forbidden to smoke In her presence) waiting for the Lesson to begin, impatient to have It over so I could get on with my 78 gArnet poems Writing but curious to know what Would come from the lips of the Oracle that day. And once she began I was in thrall to her conviction. These scholia took place long, long Ago. My aunt has been dead for over Thirty years. The great house and Its gardens have passed out of the Family. I am older than she was When she was my teacher. Yet even Now as I sit here typing, her figure Is as clear as if she were still Alive; she is standing in the doorway Of my study, the not beautiful little Woman with the insistent voice. Her consuming love for me has Penetrated time, it surrounds me Like a sacred aura. She had great Need of me, imperfect as I was. She had no children of her own, And I was named for the father Whom she idolized. I was the Receptacle. She was determined to put As much of him into me as she could. She had a store of stories to tell me About her parents and the aunts and Uncles, even about my great-grandfather, Who looks so fierce in the daguerreotypes In the family album; about his house Where wide lawns sloped down to the Allegheny River as it came through Pittsburgh to join the Monongahela To make the Ohio at the Point where Once Fort Duquesne had stood. Trips In the buggy with her father to the New mills on the South Side, where the Eliza Furnaces were named for one of Her aunts, the flames rising out of Them against the sky at night. ...