Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)

I hesitated before untying the bow that bound this book together.

I hesitated
before untying the bow
that bound this book together.

A black book:
ALBUMS
CA. AGRIPPA
Order Extra Leaves
By Letter and Name

A Kodak album of time-burned
black construction paper

The string he tied
Has been unravelled by years
and the dry weather of trunks
Like a lady's shoestring from the First World War
Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen
Until they resemble cigarette-ash

Inside the cover he inscribed something in soft graphite
Now lost
Then his name
W.F. Gibson Jr.
and something, comma,
1924

Then he glued his Kodak prints down
And wrote under them
In chalk-like white pencil:
"Papa's saw mill, Aug. 1919."

A flat-roofed shack
Against a mountain ridge
In the foreground are tumbled boards and offcuts
He must have smelled the pitch, In August
The sweet hot reek
Of the electric saw
Biting into decades
...