Summer Charade Poem by Liilia Talts Morrison

Verandas dripping lilacs
Pale yellow apples
Burst with tangy liquids
Bowing from dark green branches
Touching northern grasses
Coaxed to fullness by summer sun

In distance small laces of forest
High bushes, some thorny, some not
A patch of tall stalks
Shows a garden
Well cared for by unseen hands

The farm is much more than a family
Or village, or even a clan
It is an illusion of safety
A haven if only in dreams

Who are you that sit there in summer
Surrounded by woods, fields and grass
The children, the uncles, the fathers
The brothers and aunts with their friends

This can't be a casual picnic
The men are in full suits and dress
The women are wearing their finery
The children in white Sunday-ness

I see you back there
You're the father
A patriarch, that is for sure
Your silence speaks louder than iron
That's beat on the anvil of life

And you, lovely lady, quite well fed
You jauntily sport a man's cap
You'll never know why the door closed
To life, to love and to hope

The sea captain wears a white mustache
So proper and trimmed with great care
In time he will come back and visit
But this will not happen too soon.

Then there is the man who knows numbers
His schooling clear-cut and complete
His hair is quite slick and pomaded
His suit well cut, but not new.

He will not be mentioned at even
When family sits down to eat
But proudly relate to his children
His glorious day as a guest

Small children in white are not counted
Too young to be reckoned with yet
They need but to be there and smiling
Wait for their turn and their test

The young men, sons of the great one
In clothes so fine for their girth
They carry the bloodlines dynastic
As fine as are raised on this earth

They cannot stray from the order
As tight as their cravats, necks raw
Their life path a chosen profession
Of medicine, science or law

The girls as they flower to women
Will equally follow the path
Narrow their crinolines waisted
As will be their ways, so help God.

There's no food to be had on this picnic
That is for the others, you see.
The farm and its bounty is richer
For workers and farmhands, not thee.

The hands that toil these wide lands
Will never be brought to this group
For suits and white dresses on grasses
Are not what the farm folk do seek.

The world is here split in two factions
The haves and have nots, they say
The haves with their paths strictly chosen
The have nots pull roots from the clay

It's only a photo forsaken
From timeworn albums found
Its age must be close to a hundred
Its people long since under ground

I feel like a voyeur to venture
And carefully view this parade
A voyeur sadly observing
A long ago summer charade.