Myrtle

While researching my thesis (a creative non-fiction memoir of my grandmother, this is the most interesting thing I came across. It's her graduation picture. I love that little smirk she has. That says more about her attitude and life than anything I ever found in all of my research.

That picture inspired this poem --

"Black, White, and Gray"

She gazes out from
her senior portrait
not yet 18 and set to graduate.

Her image preserved
in the black, white, and gray
of 1923.

But she is etched
in full color and motion
of memory.

Her hair, usually auburn,
later drained white in the nursing home
rather than this dull gray,
is curled in waves
and cropped short -
just below her earlobes.
The bangs, swept to the right,
fall on her foreheard.
This is the very haircut
that earned the valedictorian
a week's suspension
which she spent writing the school song
and hitch-hiking with a friend across the iron range.

Her broad nose, a family distinction,
is plae and level,
not nearly as haughty
as many would believe.

Her lips, always painted red,
like her nails in later years,
at first appear pursed in a slight smile.
But look closer,
the left corner is hooked
ever so slightly
into a smirk,
which she snuck in before the flash,
thwarting her father's wish for a obedience.

Her eyes, so tender blue in my youth,
later clouded over with cataracts,
are twin dark orbs,
but nothing -
not the plain black, white, and gray,
not the yawn of 82 years,
not even the grave,
can shade the cool defiance
that glows behind them
and paints a permanent
portrait of her
swirling in hues
of love, family, and imagination
forever alive in my memory.