SZPT.INFO

When my mother spoke
of sadness and widows,
my father muttered, “Well, well,”
and shook the paper open
in front of his face.

Now fifty years together
isn’t enough. I was wrong about her,
a widow three days who will not
sit in his easy chair.
In their living room I wait to lift

whatever she wants and then
as if I wer a boy again wandering
at dusk I hear her voice fly
across the woods to call me home.
A place for everything,

I thought, was what she loved.
On their unmade bed-a torn envelope,
its birthday card he must have hidden
beneath his socks, signed in x’s and o’s,
a boy’s hand, a boy’s gesture.

Seventy tomorrow, she asks
for help tonight to sort suspenders,
trousers creased to their cuffs,
the two-toned shirts she chose for him
and washed and folded and set into a drawer.