Talkies

Into a silent house with orderly shelves

Came me

With the big gesture

And a book of ghost stories--

Getting into my mother's jewelry and crowing,

"I'm a star!!!"

You couldn't shame it out of me.

Always,

I made necklaces from rain drops--

And where the wooden fence met the back of the garage,

That was my plantation

Where I bossed my puppets about

And no one demanded a sensible word all day.

Chokecherry wine is bitter,

And while I loved the odd scent on Daddy's breath when he picked me up and held me,

Bottles are never becoming for a lady.

My movie goes on and on

And I have survived,

Though Daddy and my first love didn't.

Always, growing up, I insisted

That I had a missing sister-twin

And demanded to know where she was.

Now I have found her.

She is me.

Living is a sketchy business,

And I'm sorry for the ones I have had to leave behind;

But when I lay my dreams out like fancy dresses,

Put them on and call them poems,

"Ta-da!

I'm a star!!!"

And you can't take that away from me.

_______

Photograph: Tracey Power as Mary Pickford. Last line courtesy of George and Ira Gershwin.