4.11.10
yesterday, we walked in the foothills
my father, my son and I
the youngest took the lead
full of adventure and unbridled boy,
running ahead
the branch he called a walking stick
really a sword, a light saber
to battle the first small clouds
of invading gnats and
imaginary foe lurking in the
grassy ravine’s twisted
clumps of scrub brush
my father and I
kept our best pace
and talked of more serious
things than stones that resembled bones
and miniature cities in creek beds
our words found work and travel and planning
and my mother, who died last fall
what are we doing now?
we are moving on
my father, superbly skilled in
his pragmatism, leading the family
from the fires of transformation
to a cooler tomorrow of not looking back
“what are my choices,” he said
when I complimented his strength
“I don’t want the alternative.”
me, a little less skilled
and still dazed, perhaps
from the gradual, and then sudden
death
it’s so final
like some of the air was taken
out of the room
a ray of light accidentally broken off the spectrum
and lost in the dark abyss
but that day
the meadowlarks knew only
that the sky was warmer
and new shoots of grass had
pushed through the last snow
in big-breasted bellows of
yellow and speckle
they yelled their sweet song
to each other
across the pitched fields
in solitary strategic position
on fenceposts and
treetops
or embracing violently
in fitful mating squawks
among the smooth, small boulders
in the hillside
just a moment in time
for three generations of men
springtime songbirds
and the memory of a matriarch
