April 7, 2025Second Time Going
My father died on the June morning
of my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary,
and the next year, grief caught me by the throat,
silenced all words but no.
It was my mother’s death in winter, though,
that ushered my undoing. Snow fell most days,
and we were boxed in. When it didn’t, the roads
were slick with ice. The cardinals still came
to the pear tree, their red a welcomed brightness
against the white. But one day a storm so strong
attacked our Vermont woods that the tree was torn
apart as if severed by lightning.
Branches lay scattered on the ground or dangled
like limp limbs begging amputation. My husband
cut it back to almost nothing, and the cardinals
disappeared. The icicles hung heavy
on the house eaves, eager to pierce
the inadvertent passerby, and thundered
to the ground with the arrival of any warmth.
The breach of her death, a crack in the river ice,
did not mend. Rather it sprouted new veins,
like a car windshield when hit by a rock.
The silence after her last breath hovered
over the house. Time did not cushion
grief. Still, her clothes hang in the closet,
her jewelry nestles inside their velvet boxes,
her paints lie untouched on her easel,
paintings unfinished propped against walls.
I walk into her room, open the windows
now that winter has eased, to let her spirit move freely.
I sit on her bed, talk to her, as I did that last time
when she quietly just left. And the birds
still sing.