Before the age of doing and photographing and filming and texting what you did, back when people simply did, a girl got married at seventeen,
recalled tonight under lamplight in an Ozark farmhouse by my old, widowed Aunt Dot, the woman who once was her. There were no photos of the girl as she waited
in the truck with her first two babies for her husband to come out of the bar until it was dark, and then in the dark. Nobody filmed him
at the screen door of the kitchen, waking from the spell of his anger with a lead pipe in his hand saying, “I believe I killed that cow,” or filmed her
stepping between his fists and her son on the night he broke her nose. Literal, plainspoken and sorrowful, Dot seems to find her, the poor young girl,
married for life, and him, my uncle, the good old boy everyone loved, including me, in the shadows cast by her lamp and chair, just the three of them there,
and me, and the small, hand-held device of this poem.
Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom by Dorothy Parker
Daily dawns another day; I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there, Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, Hear a song, or watch a stage, Leave some words upon a page, Claim a foe, or hail a friend— Bed awaits me at the end.
Though I go in pride and strength, I’ll come back to bed at length. Though I walk in blinded woe, Back to bed I’m bound to go. High my heart, or bowed my head, All my days but lead to bed. Up, and out, and on; and then Ever back to bed again, Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall— I’m a fool to rise at all!