-room 103 across the hall from the library-

1.

Mr. Meckelberg taught History

to Freshman High School students;

the father to his son Edward who sat next to me

in his class and was my friend.

Upon his cluttered desk,

the small, framed picture of two young people

standing stiffly side by side is faded.

They're smiling, holding hands in the morning,
standing in pajamas,
in the midst of a parched-looking garden
which resembles the one tended by my grandparents
when I was a boy.
This day, the picture fell to the floor
cracking the glass.

I remember seeing this photograph on his desk

many times before, as he’d call me up

to whisper softly.. “William, I know you can do the work.
Edward speaks so highly of you.

You need to settle down.

You’re too easily distracted".

“In April of 1945...”  He began his introduction

But as usual, I drifted lazily out the big windows
across the tarmac to the chain-link fence at the woods.

2.

Edward invited me a few days later to have dinner

with the Meckelbergs who lived up the Highlands

in a modest home that made my house look like a closet.

It appeared to be an effort to look like the larger

stone "mansions" a few blocks northward.

Table lamps too big to lift with one hand.

Apolstered Louis XV style chairs in a hallway

against a wall facing another wall.

Stuff like that.

Thick, thick carpeting and heavy drapery, muffled sound.

Things are aging,— cracks hidden, chipped
legs have been painted, closely, not fully matching,—

a stain lies secretly on the other side.

Very nice, though.

The Meckelbergs are in the kitchen.

In the living room, 

on the fireplace mantle, the photograph appears,

different only by its frame and its openness to view.

This one’s clearer, too. Not as yellow

as the one atop his cluttered desk at school.

Eddy, who are these two people?

Dinner is served. Very nice. The plates match the cups. Later,

gelatin with sliced strawberries wiggles in cut glass.

Later, the Meckelbergs are in the kitchen.

Eddy, who are those two people?

3.

No one remembers who snapped the photo

of Mr. Meckelberg's grandparents

three days before they travelled by train to London.

The two young people, living long lives with family,
died in old age having survived the busy roadways,
the falls, the illnesses, the un-common
labors, skirting typhus and the years spent agonizing the parched
gardens at Bergen-Belsen.


In the kitchen of his home, their grandson dries,
as his wife washes, the dishes.

                                                    B.M.C.D