Divorce, death, a marriage.Someone is born but
The phone didn't ring.
The house that was there
Changed
from bricks to memories.A year then ten -Fifteen, twenty,Twenty-two or thirty three
Still I read the Bible Granny gave to me.
I looked for a birthday card-
I found her obituary.
I once sat silent in a tree-stand
Waiting for deer with a Missouri foxtrot man.
He was wise and patient with horses.
He was quick to grin and sweat,
He would do the accounting.
At the house, tip to filter, until he slept,
He relentlessly smoked his cigarettes.
About the horses
He said - don't leave your foot in the stirrup -
They might drag you all evening
Across the grass and red-gold hay,
Green, red-gold then
Dead-still and grey.
I heard my first coyote that night.
Dogs woke and slunk nearer to sniff the moon-
It rose and sunk -
They whimpered, whispered, shivered, and
Barked.
Crickets rubbed legs and fiddled.
Frogs sang, theyJumped into the dark water of the trough.Granny told me one tale -Jonah and the whale-
Jonah sank but was raised.
I drifted, drifted, drifted off to Nineveh.
Ceding my mind to night and my dreams,
With Granny next to me.
She ran her fingers through my hair until
Both of us would sleep.
She snored un-ladylike.
Did she wake in later years to think, to Remember loving my father or knowing me?
Barn cats ran wild
Past well-tended flower beds.
Running still, running then,
They spring across the yard
They dashed on silent padded paws.
We are in a car and ride silently to church, but I saw that I will see them for the rest of my life Running there again.
Later there was a green cigarette bag.
Supple faux leather and a brassy click-
The window cracked and
Smoke trailed us,
Granny, me, and me and Nick.
From Bastrop to heaven
Through impatient years to here.
Stale air inside and
"Peter and the Wolf."
They're both gone now but
The dust motes still float in light and smoke,
Bright and second hand.
The young sun invades through glass.
Again our present is moving. It's ancient.
It's waiting to happen; it's already past.
