What You Left Behind

I watch the garden change my mother
where the earth has been turned many times since
you walked away from your beloved fields
a world you could enter with unending grace.

Into the barn it seems every corner recalls
the sound of the hammer and the saw
as you built my father another shed to
those beasts you cared for like no other.

Near the hearth I recall the fragrance
of those meals you imagined for my childhood
granny as you aged in timeless decades
your braided hair often wild as a teen’s.

I seek you in every room dear siblings
when you return to your home so far away
to find but a few lines in the dust of my road
abandoned rappers of a sweet delight.

Your lives are saved in layers of time
like coats of paint in an ageless palimpsest
a quilt visible only to those who knew you,
with every piece a jolt to a slowing heart.