For Peg
I lean over the window sill
Into a night that ferries the scent of smoke
past my shoulders and through the kitchen.
I step outside for another puzzled breath,
unable to translate the mute, cinderless sky or
the shadows of the sycamores.
If you were here, I would ask, Do you
smell it too? And tell you how I hate
the odor of smoke in the dark. You’d calculate
the wind’s direction, parse the weather and
the neighbors’ habits, then declare the smoke domestic
or feral and us safe, though reasonably unnerved.
Long before I met you there was another window,
a roiling sky and the skin of a different house
above me. Storm-cracked, an oak screamed.
I stared at the blind ceiling, poised to run
without direction. Then the curtain of green leaves dropped
at the screen door. Downed wires danced
their blue spark toward my single question: Now?
Then skittered off towards: Not now, not now.
The photos of your youth have been admired,
your Elvis phase the favorite. Dinner eaten
without benefit of your stories. Your obituary printed and
clipped for safe-keeping. Your brother and cousins,
at last, gone home.
A cloud takes the moon.
Around me the trees stir, their soft breath
insistent as a respirator’s hissed query: Now? Not now.
Now? Not now.
The wind shifts. I take a deep breath. My eyes burn.
Your ashes wait in a box. For the ground. For the wind.
Now.
Copyright © Rhonda Riley