Dead wood

If, say, a cherry wood

dresser of drawers

represents dead wood,

what then represents

a dead person?

And why should

this dresser of drawers

stand year after year

polished and precise

in a corner with clothes and things?

(Socks with holes and panty hose, a slip

from Montgomery Ward--and hand-

sewn initialed handkerchiefs, an empty

Dopp kit in one drawer, an old unsigned

love letter. [You knew, though.]

In another, a twenty-year old

construction-paper card with a crayoned

picture of you and him and us,

a crucifix.) 
________________________________


Do you remember that

sweater I got for you that one

Christmas? It has holes in it now

from being unworn and moth-eaten.

I'm sorry for that. Is this wood somehow

a dead reflection of you or just the

things you touched, of the things

that you were given by those that

have forgotten you?

I somehow don't have a word or

words to say what I just could not

say at any point even when I

whispered "I love you" and "goodnight"

and I called your name up and down

and up the stairs again and once more

because I felt lucky, I felt like you might

just hear me through your exhale of

cigarette smoke. I wondered, often, as

a child, if your breath would smell sweeter

had you been a little kinder or had smoked

a little less.  But I learned that kindness is 
neither inhaled or exhaled: it was in the lightness of

your hand on my shoulder and the circles

it made on my troubled belly.