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[with 3 poems by Gail Peck]
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Prayer
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Please let me see
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the cow’s big eyes
the goldenrod
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the coffee in my cup
turning color with cream
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all that painters have made
stone sculpture in a field
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family photographs
old letters
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poems and stories
that funny looking bug
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I can’t catch
how to read the clouds
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if there’s a bee in the flower
I lean to
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color of fruit
sheen of silk
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what time it is
my bright painted toes
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label on the wine bottle
I like to study
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how full to pour my glass
word and words and words
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and faces of those I love
yes mostly those
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Gail Peck
from In the Shadow of Beauty, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ — Henry David Thoreau
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Toward the end I took over the ritual, but when had it begun? I had never paid much attention to the cut flowers in the vase on the dining room table until I became complicit in their procurement. When Dad relinquished driving . . . correction, when we made Dad give up driving at age 96, it fell to one of us to take him to Trader Joe’s every week for flowers. Mom came along with us as long as she was physically able – was she choosing the flowers she liked or the ones Dad wanted her to choose?
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When it became too much to shepherd two elders on walkers and still push a shopping cart, it became just Dad doing the choosing. Same variety every week, pink or mauve Alstroemeria, Peruvian Lily – I truly think Mom would have been equally happy with anything from TJ’s lush bank of bouquets, but these in particular held their petals longer, according to Dad. Most blooms would last until next week’s shopping, and even then Dad would order us to separate out any stems that still seemed fresh. Thrifty. A good provider. The manager in charge. My Dad. The flowers were one last affirmation of his life-long identity.
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What do we see when we look at another person’s life? We are adrift in the ocean of “Why did she do that?” and “Why does he act that way?” Rocked by chop and foam, no safe or simple way to dive deep, a fathomless conversation. We observe from arm’s length how the one we love reacts, their judgements and choices, but the water is opaque; what impulse impels the rudder? Did Dad keep flowers on the table to make Mom happy, or did he do it to feel happy about being seen to be making Mom happy?
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During the last months Mom lived I brought her flowers from my own gardens. First Lenten Rose (Hellebore) and Redbud branches, then Daffodils and Narcissus that kept blooming for a solid month. As the weather warmed I shared Beebalm and Anise Hyssop my son-in-law had started for me in his greenhouse, then the cavalcade of Asters, Black-Eyed Susans giving way to Marigolds and Zinnias, the first year I’d planted such. I think I brought them every week to make Mom happy, a last chance for a final gift just from me. But I think I was also incredulous that my lackadaisical gardening could produce such bounty – I was showing off.
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I would place a few long stems in a fluted vase on the tiny kitchen table where Mom read the comics each morning; another small vase beside her accustomed seat on the couch; finally all vases came to rest beside her bed where she spent most of her final weeks. It never failed. She would, with effort, turn her head and spy my offering. Then she would look at me and smile.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Leaving
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Once you are left
you are always left
a clock ticking backwards
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You tried to crawl out the window
when your father packed his suitcase
and were pulled back
You opened the door
and ran after the car until breathless
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Why does the sound of a train whistle
not make you sad when one
took your mother away for months
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Perhaps because your grandmother
played The Lonesome Railroad Blues
on her harmonica and the dog danced
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The calendar nailed to the wall
turned one month over another
until winter was gone
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Daffodils bloomed the dogwood
reopened Christ’s wounds
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Curious girl who gathered flowers
from fields and pulled petals
from daisies – he loves me, he . . .
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Gail Peck
from In the Shadow of Beauty, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Your family, like mine, has stories you break out at every gathering, dust off, polish up, and share good as new. I’m sure Dad is glad we finally quit telling the one about him breaking a full bottle of ketchup at the diner in Parkersburg, West Virginia when we were teenagers. Then again there are probably any number of stories that deserve more retellings than they get. Stories make us a family. What will happen to the stories that no one keeps alive?
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Gail Peck’s In the Shadow of Beauty tells stories that make a family. The stories are cut flowers and lace, and they are rancid wounds and meanness. The people we want to love can hurt us the most. The people we want to hold onto forever will all leave us in time. We seek meaning by revisiting and reliving the turning points as well as the ho-hum trivial passages that have somehow hooked themselves into our memory. For most people, we will never truly grasp their intent or purpose, but when we’re brave enough to re-experience how they have affected us, we might discover our own purpose.
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Gail often uses photographs of her family, which capture a single moment without judgement or commentary, to rekindle events to which she then applies the art of poetic commentary and judgement. This book is their lives as well as hers. At one point Gail admits she does not know where the ashes of her sister are scattered but she still wants hers to mingle with them. She reveals her bonds with her mother as a many-faceted jewel, some faces bright crystal but others tarnished. And Gail inspires me to keep visiting, keep remembering, keep looking and never be satisfied that I have seen all there is to see in my own stories and my family’s. As she confesses in Arranging Flowers:
I can’t cut a flower without thinking of her,
and I may go again to place some
on her grave, but I’ll have no desire
to continue. Once you sever the stems
you know to make the most of it,
and isn’t that why we love them,
their beauty, the petals that will fall.
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❦
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In the Shadow of Beauty, poems by Gail Peck, is available from Finishing Line Press HERE
Enjoy poems from an earlier book by Gail Peck, The Braided Light, at last week’s issue of VERSE & IMAGE
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Past Tense
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How quickly it passes
from is to was
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from has to had –
as quick as a bird
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flies from a windowsill –
you hear its song
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but no longer see it.
They’d slit her gown
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up the back
to spread beneath her.
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Small, embroidered roses
at the top with beads
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in each center.
The eyes don’t totally close
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near the end
and once the hands cooled
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we knew
and I know almost no Bible verses
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but it came to me
when they removed the body
And the peace of God, which surpasses
all understanding
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for she was a godly woman,
my mother.
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Dress her in pink
with the white lace blouse
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for she loved white –
white of the lily, white of the clouds.
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Gail Peck
from In the Shadow of Beauty, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown KY; © 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
In the Shadow of Beauty is beauty indeed. The poems are beautiful and heartbreaking. They speak to us all, evoking memories of our own mothers and fathers, too.
Gail Peck’s poetry is immediate, intimate, and memorable. It lingers long after read and read again.
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Thanks for your words, Diana, and for stopping by to share. —B
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These are lovely poems and memories, heartaches and joys of our complicated loves. Thank you!
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Thanks for sharing, Debra. I appreciate you. —B
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