Diary by a Twenty-Year-Old Man
by Martha Deed
It calls to me
the dark leather diary
small tear on its front cover
145 years old and composed
by a 20-year-old man
What can he say to me?
this fellow who somehow missed
the Civil War?
(Perhaps too young?)
Who wants to succeed
at gardening
should he remain at home
for the next year?
And at the very least
hopes his family will all live to see
year's end, who declares his need
to control his disposition
Why do I hang on to his every word
when the 20 year-olds I knew
in my day
were hopeless . . .?
Has Winter scorched his smile
as it has mine?
This is a serious inquiry
more basic than the ancient photo
that solved the riddle of where
my brother got his nose.
Note: The diarist was Charles Edward Shepard, future editor and publisher of The Long-Islander. Author's Great-grandfather. The 1869 diary is now held by Huntington Historical Society.
Martha Deed's poetry collections Climate Change (2014) and her sixth book, Under the Rock (forthcoming), are from Foothills Publishing. Author of a half-dozen chapbooks, her most recent is “We Should Have Seen This Coming” (Locofo Chaps Moria Poetry, 2017). Deed has twice been nominated for a Pushcart prize and dozens of her poems have appeared in online and print journals as well as in anthologies published by Iowa, Red Hen, Exoxial, and others.