bolts of bright cloth
on the counter tops,
the small rattle of buttons,
the bell in the register —
then on to the cold tile
of a bigger store, and then one
still bigger — gray carpet,
wide aisles, a new town
to get used to — then into
retirement, a few sales
in your own garage,
the concrete under your feet.
You had good legs, Dad,
and a good storekeeper’s eye:
asked once if you remembered
a teacher of mine,
you said, “I certainly do;
size 10, a little something
in blue.” How you loved
what you’d done with your life!
Now you’re gone, and the clerks
are lazy, the glass cases
smudged, the sale sweaters
pulled off on the floor.
But what good times we had
before it was over:
after those stores had closed,
you posing as customers,
strutting in big, flowered hats,
those aisles like a stage,
the pale mannequins watching;
we laughed till we cried.
The Fan in the Window
It is September, and a cool breeze
from somewhere ahead is turning the blades;
night, and the slow flash of the fan
the last light between us and the darkness.
Dust has begun to collect on the blades,
haymaker’s dust from distant fields,
dust riding to town on the night-black wings
of the crows, a thin frost of dust
that clings to the fan in just the way
we cling to the earth as it spins.
The fan has brought us through,
its shiny blades like the screw of a ship
that has pushed its way through summer —
cut flowers awash in its wake,
the stagnant Sargasso Sea of July
far behind us. For the moment, we rest,
we lie in the dark hull of the house,
we rock in the troughs off the shore
of October, the engine cooling,
the fan blades so lazily turning, but turning.
Daddy Longlegs
Here, on fine long legs springy as steel,
a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill
that skims along over the basement floor
wrapped up in a simple obsession.
Eight legs reach out like the master ribs
of a web in which some thought is caught
dead center in its own small world,
a thought so far from the touch of things
that we can only guess at it. If mine,
it would be the secret dream
of walking alone across the floor of my life
with an easy grace, and with love enough
to live on at the center of myself.
Goodbye
You lean with one arm out
against the porch post,
your big hand cupping its curve,
shy of that handshake
we both know is coming.
And when we’ve said enough,
when the last small promises
begin to repeat, your eyes
come to mine, and then
you offer your hand,
dusted with chalk from the post,
and sticky with parting.
Laundry
A pink house trailer,
scuffed and rusted, sunken
in weeds. On the line,
five pale blue workshirts
up to their elbows
in raspberry canes —
a good, clean crew
of pickers, out early,
sleeves wet with dew,
and near them, a pair
of bright yellow panties
urging them on.
Ladder
Against the low roof of a house
in
