caught in memory's half-light

When he tells the story now 

he's at the center of it, 

 

everyone else in the house 

falling into the backdrop— 

 

my mother, grandmother, 

an uncle, all dead now—props 

in our story: father and daughter 

caught in memory's half-light. 

 

I'm too young to recall it, 

so his story becomes the story: 

 

1969, Hurricane Camille 

bearing down, the old house 

 

shuddering as if it will collapse. 

Rain pours into every room 

 

and he has to keep moving, 

keep me out of harm's way— 

 

a father's first duty: to protect. 

And so, in the story, he does: 

 

I am small in his arms, perhaps 

even sleeping. Water is rising 

 

around us and there is no 

higher place he can take me 

 

than this, memory forged 

in the storm's eye: a girl 

 

clinging to her father. What 

can I do but this? Let him 

 

tell it again and again as if 

it's always been only us, 

 

and that, when it mattered, 

he was the one who saved me. 

[Natasha Trethewey {1966- } 'Duty', from Monument: Poems New and Selected]