DRY CRIK Journal

Tall shadow on the morning wall,
like a person waiting in the dark
when I awake without a mother,

now planted atop my father
like shoeboxes in a black closet
I’ll never open – only to drive by

            with a nod to the gods
            in case they’re listening.

Cast from the desk lamp,
she comes alive when I rise
to get more coffee, changes

shape and grins with gestures.
The one she gave Robbin
has bloomed every year

since her father died, white
faces reaching for the light
when we’d return from Elko –

after ten cold days in a stale
empty house, looking out at Sulphur
as our sweet ‘welcome home’.