A Different Kind of Gold Rush

Whispering pages in rustling attic leaves,
There's a haunting here.
Nothing spoken, but the breezed silence.
Granddaughter sifting through Grandma's things
and coming to an understanding
that Grandma was a woman once, a girl, an infant,
a fetus - perhaps unwanted.

Dried flowers for journal entries turned dustied mold
like the day turns
like the day turns
like the day turns
Lore that could not be told within wrinkled folds
from long ago - lost comb with rusted teeth and ancient topaz,
sketches of a now gone life before the world war
before that indigo jazz
before the red-washed beach
before the bullet and bloodied razzmatazz

The ghosts waltz their way in and out of stained pages,
skirting images of sepia-ed ages
through granddaughter's honeyed braids
into the shades of decades.
Their chill still dancing like the rain,
stepping with the weight of water
around fire and milk and rose petal slaughter

Two were of dead lovers
(who never got over grandma, but died well in love)
Three were of aunties
(praying to Madonna, Baba Yaga, the old man above)
One of a dog
(wolfhound and found on the tracks half-dead)
One of a cat
(black and blind with a penchant for the sun-drenched bed)

I am not sleeping, but I do dream silently
listening to the child up there sifting - looking for me
A different kind of Gold Rush,
One that has remained hush-hush
One that will push us gently,
push us gently into the riches that only the
bees and the trees and the sea can understand.

© Rachel Lisi 2004

This poem appears in Homeground Magazine (UK)