The day they carried you off

                        THE COATS

                    by Tess Gallagher

                                             for Mary Kepler (1884-1966)

They made you complicated,

a new one each year

and underneath, the same

old print dress. Outside

under the maples you were smart

and garrulous on my grandfather's arm

walking down Valley Street

to the shops, talking into his silence

as into some idea of yourself

grown to your side.

Yet you loved telling how

you were engaged to another

the night he took you off 

in his buckboard.  Marriage too

came like an impulse

to turn against yourself.  Life

caught you up in its clumsy arms

and danced you out of your Oklahoma

youth into the milltown

of my birth, you in your new coat,

leading me into the dimestore

to buy silk ribbons.

Shut in the closet, your coats

were a family of witnesses

who could not remember you.

They were waiting for the one

to send them all again

into the weather.  Standing

before your mirror once

in the dark of the bedroom

I put myself into a heavy tweed

with its cold silk lining.  The wide arms

were a hiding place; the hem

brushed my patent leather shoes.

It was a bargaining

that I should turn into the room,

you age about me like a sack.

I wanted to throw something over you

the day they carried you off

like a trophy in your silk lining

Rosy and familiar you received each of us

in a housedress that denied you

were going anywhere.  That year

the winter came over the ground

like a rich white pelt.

I thought of you accepting it,

something chosen, a comfort

that had sought you out

in the cold of the land.

from Tess Gallagher, Amplitude: New and Selected Poems, 1987.