Meditation on Leaving

 

I don’t want to mention death

anymore or the black bird swooping down

from the pine tree. I need daffodils

to poke their sharp heads through winter’s ground,

for the purple clematis to vine-climb around the mailbox post

and Carolina wrens to visit my deck. It is not time

says the moon. So I place my hand on your cold grave,

set a stone down again and wait for spring to whisper in.

 

I find a brown leaf in the grass, a gray bird

twisted on the ground,

flat snakes, dead branches.

I close my eyes and dreams

will not return. Just my father’s voice replaying in my head

repeating the same sentence again and again.

 

On my wedding day

he stood beside me, hands dead at his side, he forgot to lift

my white veil to reveal my unmarried self. I lifted the lace myself.

Now my hands are so weighed down, I do not know how

to lift this black veil that has sewed itself into my face.

 

What was there before departure?

I watch fathers greet daughters,

grandparents sweeping up grandchildren. Lips meeting cheeks.

 

I have been here a long time at this gate waiting for arrival

that will never come again. Now leaving is all there is.

 

The mother coming through the front screen door in summer

groceries in hand, flies buzzing through. A lover beside her.

Those three brothers back from college or work or a friend’s.

Even the dog returned after a daylong escape. How does it shift?

The door slamming on the way out, the father packing, the suitcase

in his hand, the not coming back.

 

The tumblers will not click into place, numbers flit by in the sky,

I can no longer reach them. My arms are not long enough. Must I grow wings

to fling this feathered body to meet the ones and the sixes. How can

a number matter? 21 years of marriage, 3 children, 1 dog. 5 houses.

It could have been anyone on any given day. Why pick that man

on that train? Why take away this father?

 

I am walking backwards trying to reverse the hands

of the clock. Nothing works. I stand in a tree and sweep

the sky with a net, numbers fall inside. Let’s turn that lock again.

 

The month my father died the black bird returned to my windowsill.

It was all about the leaving. The brothers left the house long before.

The mother, the father. Now it’s my turn. I want to go. I don’t want

to go. A different house. A different form of death. I am grabbing

the knob, pushing through the door.

 

And all those stones I set on my father’s grave

have somehow turned up inside my own pockets.