A sole picture-
mute
black-and-white
five by ten,
framed in cheap metallic gray-
sat pompously in the main room.
It lightened up the rustic table
sparkled brighter than the sky.

It embraced my grandfather's face.

Pinned under glass,
the reflection of a lion of a man
straight, austere, proud,
piercing eyes that stared at the world,
and a weighty moustache
that commanded his face.

I used to look at his picture
high on my tippy toes,
looking for my resemblance
in a shade of his nose,
or the shape of an ear,
or the line of an eyebrow.

Because, you see
he died young;
well before I was born.

He was a miner.

Day by day he breathed in
the vein and cleavage of rabid rocks
while locked up in the dark dust
of cavernous copper mines.

I don't know where this portrait went.
Swallowed, maybe,
in the tracks of many lives;
lost, perhaps, in the shuffle of the ages,
or faded in the sun of many summers...

My hands are empty
but in my mind
he flourishes like an evergreen
with strong and sturdy roots,
much like his character.

Today I swallow his essence,
that one encapsuled in that frame-
the frame that someone set high in the best table
and the face that enlivened the entire room,

at a time that was
before my own.