No mound of dirt was shuffled to top a grave.
There will be no tombstone, no epitaph.
No weeds to pull, lawn to mow, flowers to tend.
There will be none of these.  Only this box, this
terra-cota colored plastic box, comprised of a
sampling of him, secured by a seat belt on my
car's back seat.
It's fallen to me to transport his ashes from a city
in Ohio to one in West Virginia, my poor dad,
who's had the misfortune of dying in a hospital
two hundred miles from home.
How ironic, I think, that of all his years of living,
he never once rode in my car, yet here we are on
a road trip together.
This is not my father.  But it may as well be,
the distance looms between us just as big a gap
as it ever was, minus the polite conversation,
the awkward moments we'd always encountered
when together not knowing what to say to one
another.
As I drive I feel this need to talk to him, to tell
him what I have always wanted to tell him.
I love you Dad.  But the words won't make that
transition from head to mouth, prove themselves
no easier to say after his death than they did in life.
So I recite my poetry to him, poetry being the
only thing I have to offer, words I'd never shared
with him when he was alive.
Poems flow from my mouth as freely as the tears
which stream down my face.  I cry for my dad
but also for myself, for all the hugs never
exchanged, all the words left unsaid.
The car is eerily silent and I half-expect were I to
glance in the rearview mirrow I'd see his ghost
sitting on the back seat.  I search the sky as I drive,
praying for a sign, something to let me know he is
at peace,  But there is nothing, only blue sky dotted
with clouds, and this plastic box entrusted to me
for safe delivery.  It asks nothing of anyone, gives
nothing in return.
Shortly it will be delivered to its final destination.
Without hoopla or fanfare it will be placed on a
table set up for the ceremony.  Put there for the
sole purpose of giving him a proper mourning.

In the pet store
My granddaughter squealing
Reaching out her tiny hand
Fingers delicately touching
Soft white and gray fur
Blue eyes staring
Crystalline clear
Weighing her every move
She, ooh’ing and aah’ing
Unaware…

Memory flashing
Hot as a gun blast
Lines of pain creeping
Over my face
Burlap bags of
Flickering motion
Gurgling sounds
Beneath wet stones
My sisters and I
Wading in the creek
Searching for minnows
Stumbling onto
Their watery graves…
My grandfather’s solution
To the newest litter of kittens

Early September and the leaves are falling,
they crunch beneath my feet
as I walk the dogs through the park.
Scattered on the lawn they've become
brown and brittle, fragile as my heart.
Soon they will be trampled and forgotten,
as if their existence in nature never mattered,
as if life never coursed through their veins,
with no thought as to how they played
in the scheme of things.
How easily we forget
little things that once mattered,
hearts,
leaves,
it's all the same thing.

I hear you pull into the drive and the free spirit
I've exercised all day abruptly folds into itself.
I greet you at the door with a pasted smile,
asking how your day was, expecting no reply yet,
feeling the sting when I get none.
Supper is served and you take yours into the
living room, plopping yourself on the couch,
balancing the plate and the remote with the finesse
of a curbside juggler.
I remain at the table, staring at you, staring at the TV,
while a childhood rhyme plays in my head,
*Nobody loves me, everybody hates me.
Guess I'll go eat worms!

What a surprise to see you
as I was getting off work.
You stopped by, you said,
for a cup of coffee.

I smiled as the words
escaped your lips,
both of us laughing at this,
both knowing it
for the ruse it was.

As you followed me home
so I could change,
did you happen to see my smile
in the side mirror?
I was hard pressed
to keep it on my face.

It lit up my car like a tiny sun,
bounced 'round and 'round
from ceiling to floor,
tried to unlock the doors
and the windows.

Said, it wanted to ride
in your car.

Perhaps this is the way Picasso got started,
as a baby sitting in a high chair, dumping the
dish and the cup, the fork or spoon to the floor,
delighting in how the green of the pea met
with the yellow gravy, how the mashed
potatoes looked set against the wood plank
of the kitchen floor.  Did he laugh with glee
to see the orange yolk of the egg swirled in
the white of the milk, how the red Jell-O
looked floating in the yellowed chicken soup?
Later, when painting became more than
a figment in his mind’s eye, did he recall this
early experimentation, this playing with food?
I prefer to think of you in this way daughter,
dabbling in colors like a young Picasso, your
only tools the fingers in your food.  It is much
easier on my psyche to channel happy
thoughts your way, preferable to my getting
upset, aggravated every time you dump your
food, my blood pressure rising to the roof.
At every meal you fend off any attempts to
feed you, preferring to lift your own fork or
spoon then send them sailing, as if to say,
I will be in charge of my world.  I will
command what is at hand.  As my mind
wanders, I begin dabbling in daydreams,
futuristic thoughts… I am beaming with
pride… you are being called a genius as you
are applauded for your latest masterpiece…
but swiftly I am brought back to reality, as
just as quickly you hurl from your high chair
this meal’s rendition, today’s most recent
work of art.

From the moment I read in my first grade reader,
See **** run, I couldn’t wait to turn the page
to view the pictures and see what other sorts of
things **** could do.  But my bigger passion was art,
so it was an easy task for me to draw and color big
letters to make an alphabet book, which we were told
we could take home to keep.

With the first letter, A, Sister Clara wrote on the
chalkboard, A is for apple.  In an effort to encourage
us to pick appropriate colors she asked the class,
What colors are apples?  The class responded with red,
yellow, green.  Painstakingly coloring our A’s I was
proud of myself for keeping within the lines, and
based on Sister Clara’s beaming smile, just knew
my A was the best A in the whole class.

Today, going through old boxes I take out that
alphabet book and smile as I open it to the first
page, the letter A jumping out at me in boldly colored
sections of plaids, polka dots, and stripes.  My face
beams its own smile of approval at the pleasant
discovery that even at the tender age of five, I was
already a rebel before my time.

You anticipate the bees’ arrival
with that same wonder lust in
your eyes that a child wears on
Christmas Eve, spending the whole
month before their arrival planning,
thinking out the construction of their
houses, going back and forth on the
decision of where you will put them
in the backyard.   I listen with
fascination as you explain to me
about the workers, drones, and the
queen, who from a larva you tell me,
feeds solely on royal jelly.  

You have become a beekeeper
extraordinaire, intent on teaching
me everything you know about bees.
And it is quite funny when you mimic
the bee dance, buzzing around in
circles, then abruptly changing
direction and buzzing around again.  
I watch you with the same wonder
lust in my eyes as you have when
you talk about your bees, feeling
a wealth of love for you, this man
tenderly caring for and loving one
of God’s smallest creations.

I anticipate the bees’ arrival with
dread, careful not to let on how
much they intimidate me.  After
they arrive you take out a few and
gently hold them up for me to see,
the thought of their sting sending
chills over my body.   That night, as
we do our own tango between the
sheets, I think of them out there
buzzing, buzzing; the ****** queen
leaving the hive to mate with drones-
the lazy bees who make no honey,
their sole purpose to mate then die.

The roses on my table appear to be singing,
so sure of themselves and their beauty.
Both proud and arrogant they break into song
the minute they are alone, when they think
no one hears.
I can tell by their pursed mouths, I have
caught them in action, they have been
silenced in midair by my scrutinizing eyes.
With red mouths agape, they stealthily
**** in air, in lieu of the next chorus, their
petals wrapped tight to hide trilling tongues.

They cannot fool me.

From a vase on my table the roses are singing,
stars in a theatre of dishes, pots and pans.
I haven’t caught them yet for they are
secretive and sly.  Yet somehow I know this
theory to be true.

While I am away or while I am sleeping I
know they are singing, shedding their petals
like a burlesque singer sheds her clothes.  They
repeat their song, day after day, night after
night, and they will go down singing, dropping
from exhaustion as the water runs dry, till the
last one withers and dies.

Before the actual birth, I tried to convince myself
there could be no room for fear.  That in fact, the
only way I was going to get through this and come
out smelling like a rose was to keep my wits about
me, focus on my breathing and counting, and to
push when I felt the need to push.

When the labor pains worsened I forgot all prior
convincing, edged out of that window to stand on
the ledge of fear.  Trying to push this baby through
the birth canal was like trying to push a blimp
through the Washburn Tunnel.  All the preparatory
lessons flew off that ledge like birds to the wind.

As the sun rose over Houston, the rays of dawn
crept through the hospital blinds, bringing with
them the first cry of my newborn nine pound,
fourteen ounce son, affirming that old adage that
everything is bigger in Texas.   And, as my eyes
lit on the dozen yellow roses you had sent me,
the thought that if I was going to come out of this
smelling like a rose, the yellow rose of Texas
was the one I’d want to be.