I spent several hours doing a little project for my Mom, sorting through a big box of family photos. They go back to about 1905, when my grandfather (“Papa”) was an infant. But most of them were taken in my lifetime. I’m 43. They’re photos of Papa who died two years ago, and Grandma who’s been with Jesus five months. Also my folks, brother, aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins, here in California, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Dogs, cats, horses, birds, a turtle and a rat. We’re pretty handy with our cameras, I guess.

My point isn’t just the poignancy of looking through so many pictures of a world in the process of sliding away into tule fog. It’s sad, sure; it’s joyous too. But you get a balanced, regular died of poignancy on this blog, and I know it. My point is that something just a little strange happened in my mind while I was doing this task. That fog seemed to break up just a little.

After several hours mentally back in Grandma and Papa’s house in that hot, cold, foggy town, where vineyards and orchards stretch to every horizon, I stood up and walked away. And I had the idea that I should go and visit them right away. I had the greatest desire to hear their voices, hug them, turn out the lights and sleep in that place. Just for an instant it was possible, because part of me has refused to believe they’re gone; because in a sense I forgot; I was back in twenty years ago. It was a waking dream, I guess, and it was sweet.

Driving Down the San Joaquin

It is so hard to leave

the old ones alone

with their painkillers, tomatoes,

blocks of cheese

in the icebox, bread frozen

for later, canned fish.

The clock that no one

can wind anymore.

It is hard to leave, to back

down the driveway, turn

and look back, the house leaning

into October. And all

down the valley

of San Joaquin tonight,

the harvest moon is weak,

becoming blind.

The vineyards reach

into that blindness,

go on like headstones

to the feet of the hills.

Just yards from the edge

of the road, the ghosts of

coyotes pace back and forth

along the fence,

strange friends of your

longing, sympathetic and sad.

The old dog, deaf and blind, stirs

in her blanket on the seat,

says nothing, then sleeps.

And the moon is up

but shrinking as it climbs.

Kyle Kimberlin

October, 1999