Grounding
Living on the outskirts of town,
a surrounding forest
always seemed with us―throwing shadows
through our apartment’s one window,
measuring space
between a small dinner table,
oak dresser and aluminum chair,
tracing a geometry of closeness.
But the season changed
when the calendar where you stuck
sun and moon decals
turned to a new page―
That month you cut your hair short
and didn’t look the same,
yet you were still you
and fall was still falling
when I helped you pack
under October’s tinfoil sky.
Back in the apartment, I remembered
when your hands’ bones and veins
grew over mine, and like a branch
on the forest floor, layered
in leaf-damp, lichen and moonbeams,
we thought we’d never be found.
Now trees sprawl from the town’s edge
where I still dwell, watching
the forest imperceptibly move
down the slow slope
where you disappeared―
over country roads, tumbling and rolling
into the green land.
Palimpsest
Pin oaks hold their leaves until spring.
Angled to the weather,
they look up
the gray road, waiting.
Sometimes the mailbox
rattles with the wrong names―
Written to my neighbors
and the dead,
the mail tumbles
over my porch.
Months after they dry,
the colors freeze
the leaves twirl
anxiously gauging
distance to ground.
Clinging to bark
they peer from an edge
while I, after
burying my father,
mother and brother,
wait
for the first cleansing wind―
when February’s palimpsest of salt
peels from the road
the pin oaks let go
and the real
work of winter begins.
Leaves
As a child I battled measles.
Deep in fever,
a blanket of dandelions
dew-wet from our front yard
across my head, I tried to read
The Yellow Fairy Book, falling
in enchanted forests,
past lithographs of leaves.
It seemed I never woke
from feverish sleep
until I was 42―
standing at my brother’s funeral
on a too-clear autumn day,
as everyone gathered
on fresh cemetery soil.
A few months later
when my parents passed,
I spent my days
cleaning up the basement―
bleaching patches of black mold,
packing dusty shoes,
gloves, yellowed paperbacks.
Yet part of me remains
curled up in our old house.
Even when I return
beside my wife, I sense the hall
where my brother’s room adjoined,
running in the dark
between the maples
and my bedroom window.
And as I drift away
it seems I’m still reading
that childhood book,
turning its antique pages―
Lost in wishful tales,
in valleys of allegory,
the book’s slight weight
pressing on my lap―
its embossed leather covers
rough against my skin,
slipping from my hands.
* * *