Hallway to Nowhere

looking for that one lost glove that missing sock

that fork that disappeared last week

I opened the drawer in the cabinet

no not that one it holds all the random letters

addressed to previous occupants

kept in case they one day knock on the door

you never know that car warranty could be important

the other one the one that contains all the odd items

from all the years that have ever gone astray

can openers number one pencils even a few yellowed baby teeth

not mine but from some child who lived here before

who knows when but they might want them

just joking about all of this none of the above is true

maybe could be I don’t know

because I remember her hoeing the garden

alone in her eighties in her small wood-framed house

how she left that behind to accompany her sister

who was my great grandmother in her dying days

and the kindness in her faded gray eyes

as she wrapped her wrinkled hands around mine

and told me she too would follow soon

with this sort of history woven into my bones

fierce love that disregards common norms

but pursues a deeper decency instead

I cannot be afraid

she went beyond again and again

showed me how this can be done

one gentle implacable step after another

the question that I posed once long ago

what sky do you see and how do you know

stays with me still after all these years

he did not dismiss it not even then

sat down beside me and aimed his gaze with mine

so that we both looked upwards

Into the endless shimmer of a hot afternoon

the horizon melting into forever

time itself turned liquid by the burning sun

our shared silence hung heavy in the air

not rent even by a mosquito’s buzz

we shrugged and went inside for a cold drink

unwilling to climb such a high brick wall

in the humid weather of a Mississippi summer

we did not say goodbye

did not know this time to be the last

so we did not linger over tea

pausing between each sip

to look over the cup at each other

we did not let our hands clasp

even briefly as to register dear kinship

a touch of thanks for time spent deeply

a felt recognition of common ground

in the end this does not matter

the moments themselves have passed beyond

their taste their flavor their faint perfume

remain and I am grateful

I walked the fields with my father every year

learned the rise and fall of hills and fences

where the streams and rain would run

I knew the houses and the barns

the stories of who built them and burned them

why the one small cabin stood alone

I sat in warm kitchens with elderly neighbors

listened to their yarning of who what and where

marked their passing when they died and mourned

yet I knew these stories would die with me

though grafted into my very core

I’ve walked too lightly to leave much behind

only a few words collecting dust on the table

stark against a hiemal sky

moving slightly to whisper in the chill

words pulled up from roots almost dead

given only to the crows

whatever stories the fell birds fashion

fantasies of bark and pith and crawling things

are their concern and theirs alone

neither the branch upon which they sit

nor the tree of that branch

give regard to such things

the gift once given is in the wind