The Henry Clay Inn
The young one
Looked at the boards
painted the sweet yellow
of a lemon chiffon pie,
touching the rough siding of the new building.
Satisfaction.
No imitation-wood-false-deceiving vinyl here
Wood as warm and firm as a knock.
They must have been brave
those old ladies that rebuilt the inn
It had been chewed to ashes
before the young one's mother was born.
They built it of wood
solid wood,
fragile wood.
The grey-painted tongue in groove
floor of the porch is wide and gracious.
The young one wishes for a book
and a coke with a twist of lime.
It is how and they are early and she is bored
by the middle one's attempts at conversation.
How does the inn feel?
The young one wonders
To stand beside that little police station
-- made to look like a greek temple in spite
of its smallness?
It looks as pretentious and immature as
the young one herself.
Only the college across the railroad tracks
and this new/old inn
escaped the squat, dollhouse architecture
of the little town.
The old ones have come
they laugh, they giggle.
Even though they dress in quiet good taste,
their manner implies purple jumpsuits
and floppy red hats and flashy rhinestone earrings.
Greetings and wet kisses on the cheek
That leave red smears.
The young one thinks wryly
that she needn't have bothered with rouge
today. Rubbing off the smears
would produce a fine effect.
They wander around the inn
in exploration
Ooh over the Queen Anne secretary
Ahh over the old, ornate chiffarobe.
"Did you know when Nettie died
we had a chiffarobe just like that?"
The young one felt sick
she knew the Story of the Chiffarobe
and hoe they pushed it out of a third
floor window on Oregon Hill
in Richmond.
She would have liked that chiffarobe
It would have felt at home
with her IKEA bookshelves
and her maple desk
and her pine vanity
painted a false antique green.
Her furniture was a marvel
of inter-racial relations
Unlike the uniformity of antiques
and reproductions in the inn.
Another young one serves them iced tea
in a room covered with the artistic drams
of Central Virginia housewives.
The tea is too strong and too bitter
and all -youngonemiddleoneoldones-
reach the agreement that the cook must be
a Yankee.
Southerners have more respect for
the subtleties of the
teabitter, sugarswet, lemonsour
harmony over ice.
The harmony that slides over the
tongue and keeps you cool
in pastel dresses and
light serpentine necklaces
on the porch in long summer afternoons.
© 1994 Noël Lynne Figart