Small Human Detail in Care of National Trust
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1.

The guide said much about the house: how it was built, fortified,
     how it declined.
How room after squat room closed until the caretaker died
     in 1969, Lord of Wet Rot & three decrepit towers.
The fourth—I found it—lost in laburnum & bulrush.

But nothing of small human detail: the deeply cupped stone steps
     leading down to the moat,
The name etched on a window behind the stairwell curtain:
     Eliz. Thomas 1712,
Next to it four diamonds carved in the shape of one.

2.

Sandstone cliffs above the house, & view of the Downs: arable
     fields, copses, two farmhouses, affable sheep, a windmill.
Father handed me his strange camera, foregrounding himself
     with mother, arm in arm.

It was one of those old-fashioned jobs that opens like a magic box,
     capturing the world on its ground-glass screen.
One you huddle over, holding it the way a surgeon might cup
     a replacement heart.
I turned the chrome handle & let it spring back. The click was enormous.

3.

But I have no skill. I had shrub leaves in focus at the frame’s edge,
     & the center, my parents, all cloud.
Should’ve been watching a diamond in the middle of the screen
     shift from black to blank & back.
I should’ve brought the image & its ghost-image together.

But for all my fiddling—0.8 to infinity—my parents & their pale-
     yellow doubles refused each other.
In the smudged print you can see father’s furious waving,
     & my mother, there, mouthing something I didn’t hear.

 

Ightam Mote, England