Elaine Whittaker Tether

The Symbolical Real

(After Elaine Whittaker’s Art Installation 
    "Tether")

by Ruth Roach Pierson

2009

For a time Elaine planned 
to use the actual red plaid robe
in her art installation.
But aesthetics and an insuperable  
sense of trespass       
led her instead to hang 
a black and white photograph
of the garment her father wore 
in the days before he died.

I understood her change of heart,
myself ill at ease handling 
the few books I have received 
from your small library –  
an American Heritage Dictionary,
latest edition, your OED, and the Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church.

You studiously consulted the latter
during one of my last visits,
helping me amend a poetic reference I’d made 
to the Great Schism of 1054.

Now when I hold that book in my hands 
I can feel your fingers searching through its pages 
and am overcome by the imbalance of things – 
my acquisitiveness, your poverty 
my marriages, your celibacy
my defiance of the rules, your obedience

my handful of poems, your sermons and prayers
your dying and my continuing to live.