Photograph with Stone Lion

              My brother's hair still
              blonde  my mother still

              plump from pregnancy
              it is the summer of waiting

              my father waits to be-
              come the boy I dreamed

              took me to prom  I wait
              for the day I will lop

              a half-dollar from my heel
              sliding on a box down

              a hill   the old man
              who will carry me home

              wringing my blood out
              sits folding his handkerchief

              it is the summer my aunts
              will drive three-hundred miles

              for one glimpse of the King's
              pink Cadillac one elbow one

              point of one collar  
              one stray grace note

              (who can guess
              for what the King waits)

              behind us the doorway's
              stone lion eyes steady like 

              white waves cresting never
              breaking his carved locks


              Kelly Bancroft

     

              *         *          *
      
        
              about the poem:

              "The photograph that this poem describes triggers an early memory
              of when my aunts and my grandmother -- who lived hundreds of miles 
              from us -- made the pilgrimage to Memphis to see my family and, hopefully, 
              Elvis. We didn't spot him, but I remember the intense anticipation of 
              their visit and of the potential sighting.  In this poem I try to express 
              that excitement and how this photo remains to me a kind of held breath."



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