The Farm, Three Months After Dad’s Death

Paint chips off the deck
Bare feet smear sun across wood
A melting of hours

Orange, nameless barn cat
slinks between blue hydrangeas
Day drifts to evening

Something splinter-sharp
slices August’s humid breath:
Cicada vibration

Trucks speed the backroads
Launching from lily to lily
bees zip across faces

Black walnut fingers
release twittering sparrows
Limbs curtsy in wind

My son collects eggs
from the white-rimmed chicken coop
His life has not changed

Abandoned silo
Mourning dove’s alto lament
Swallow’s coloratura

Mulberries scatter
Stain the gravel indigo
Wasps inspect new jewels

My fingers trace keys
of his Baldwin piano
Ivory absent of his broad thumbs

Only when I sing
alone by his piano
do I un-trap myself from myself

Sunset’s greasy smudge
Not necessarily happiness
Neither unhappiness

Green dappled stillness
No one in particular
loves me today

In his gray armchair
at dawn, with coffee and cat
Scent lingers in cloth

Slippers empty of feet
A cane leans against the chair
How much of him in me

My body breathes here
in the home of pine and glass
built with his hands and his dreams