The Bookshelf

I’m walking in the front door now, sometimes

past the bookshelf my father made, from scratch

back when he was a handyman, loaded

down with photo books (The Visual Dialogue, The Woman’s Eye,

Emotions & Relations, Photographing Buildings Inside and Out)

books my mother collected since college (Against Forgetting,

The Artist’s Way) books I will never sell

for any price, my grandfather’s bowler hat atop

(Makers of the Modern World, When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple)

the architectural cube I made in 3D sculpture class

with the German professor I had a crush on (The Audacity of Hope)

sweaty hours in woodshop the summer of my mother’s cancer –

yes there was only one (Collapse, Morocco, Animal Dreams)

a photo of my grandparents on their first date, I wouldn’t be here

without that date (Just Kids, The Origin of Humankind)

four photo albums of my first four years

(A Child is Born, 365 Starry Nights)

“my mother was a photographer,

I am an only child,” I apologize

proudly (Immediate Family, Precarious Life,

Long Walk to Freedom,

The Power of Myth)