Poor Aunt Midge, who: 1. refused to change
however times did; 2. spread a) expansive memories
through Maine and b) jarred orange marmalade on scones;
having lived: 3. equally for a) pearls and b) perms,
and 4. beside the phone, one longish life led out in Bangor,
one brain gone stale as loaves of store-bought bread,

has died. December twenty-four and “she is dead”
and we arrive. For nothing more will change,
not here, not up in rough and weather-beaten Bangor,
where people keep alive: 1. tradition, and 2. memories,
surely as our aunt kept a) appointments penned for perms
and b) a breadbox full of fresh-baked raisin scones.

Here, recipes are not: 1. buried with the bones
of cooks, nor 2. forgotten in their books; here the dead
may die, but their good lives on, as Midge’s a) perms
still exist in pictures and b) strands of pearls will change
hands every Christmas. We will: 1. swap, too, a) memories
of our aunt—St. Anthony invoked—and b) the Bangor