“Threads”
Book Excerpt: Night Train to Memphis
Threads
When I say he was a presence
in the house where I grew up,
I don’t mean as a ghost. My dead
grandfather would have had, I think,
too much tact to return
after the dirt had been shoveled, the limousines
parked, the black clothes folded and put away.
Still, his spirit inhabited our house.
He was born the last year of the war
in Tennessee, and he died
the last year of the war in France,
burning up with influenza the troops
brought back from the trenches.
When the Baptist preacher came to his bedside
to pray for him, Grandfather asked him would he
please go out and get him a cold bottle of beer.
Grandfather died with his reserve intact.
How little I know of the man!
I touch, wondering, the keys he left
among his things, their antiquated
edges still sharp to the touch:
lockbox, cash drawer, strongbox,
office door and locks unknown —
keys to nothing.
When I was seventeen I found
in the back of the attic
his silk frayed smoking jacket, his chesterfield
coat with those velvet lapels. I wore
his clothes until
I wore them out, feeling his spirit
breathe through the threads. Here’s his gold
watch on my table. I keep it wound.
Copyright (c) 2025 by Richard Tillinghast. Excerpted from Night Train to Memphis (White Pine Press). Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Night Train to Memphis is Richard Tillinghast’s 14th poetry collection. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. A native of Memphis, he currently lives in Hawaii and spends his summers in Tennessee.
