Legacy Requires

Damn! – forgot to shelter it from the sun –
shutter it against the glare of harsh
November afternoon which stuns
and blights and spends its watercolor
hues so incrementally and brutally:

indiscriminately drains translucent
gray-green from that pearled bay-air:
leaves it like a bare late January day
instead of warm penumbral April-prayer.
Bays and skies were staples

of my mother’s life: home movies
of unexpurgated slightly misbehaving
waves – and clouds all scurrying
and soaring – were to my impatient
adolescent eyes as inexplicable

and boring as – well, clouds and waves.
I haven’t changed too much from
my incomprehension then – nor have
I always won the fight against
the dying of this painting in the light –

sometimes the shutters gape:
the fading paper’s scraped. I do not
really understand her sight. And yet
I am the one who’s left to shelter what
still harbors its desires. Legacy requires.

.