Seven pictures hang
On my grandmother’s bedroom walls:

1 My Grandfather, whom I did not know
2 The gaudy guardian angel hovering behind kids crossing that bridge
3 Me
4 Teddy Roosevelt, no one seems to know why

These on the west wall above her hope chest.

Seven pictures hang
On my grandmother’s bedroom walls:

The east wall displays

5 A framed newspaper article, now brown and undoubtedly fragile, Charles Lindbergh landing in Paris
6 Her high school diploma

And above her bed

7 A dreamy oil painting;

of a Polynesian beach,
a place she’d longed to visit,
but, what with working for pennies
and raising my father alone,
fretting and wrestling his demons,
alternately offering Dad
tough love and soft,
he largely accepting
responsibility for her reddened eyes,
cobweb thin hair, leathery outlook,
time ran short
for making it to Maui.

One picture does not hang
In my grandmother’s bedroom:

o Regret

I hand each of these to Dad
One at a time.
He stacks them
In a box
Destined for
His attic.
In a few years I’ll
Have to unpack them again
And wonder what Teddy Roosevelt
Is doing there.