When Grandpa Died
She sat quietly with her lunch, overlooking
the Chippewa River through the dining room
bay windows as sunlight pierced through the clouds
for the first time that day.
From the screened porch I spoke to my aunt and uncle
and cousin as grandma watched the bend in the river knee,
its banks plump with snow.
I still don’t know if she recognized me standing there,
or simply waited for the right moment to speak, but
after some time she looked up and smiled and said
“It’s good to see you, dear” before returning to the river.
Kodama
I wander the dark house after everyone has gone to bed,
looking for any sign of my grandfather’s ghost. Under
the streetlamp the streets shine from fresh rain like sweat
on a damp forehead. As a child the signs of life were
the police scanner in the living room, sometimes
accompanied by his silhouette in his recliner, listening
in the dark, and later, as an adult, his constant coughs
and groans, signs of life from the room below, my grandmother
beside him, awake, holding his hand.
But he did not die here. He left in the middle of the night,
unable to breathe on his own, seven miles south in a nursing
home where he spent the final months of his long life. Maybe
his ghost is still out there, wandering, turned around in a cornfield
or pulled by the scent of his past life to the creek he crossed
as a teenager, the fields of high grass covered in dew, his pant legs
soaked to the knees on his nightly walk in the dark to see June,
his love, years before they married.
The signs are everywhere, they just are not here.
The white figure out the living room window
is not my grandfather and I don’t ask his name.
He belongs to someone else, and I wave him on.
He heads through the trees to the river where a spirit
can travel twice as fast. The ballfield near the river
where I chased grounders and pop flies has gone through
so many changes, I struggle to recognize my own memories
The light that warms my face is death.
Maybe grandfather’s ghost is ashamed now the family knows
of his numerous infidelities, like the woman at the bar he saw often,
a ten minute walk from home. Where do you go if you can’t go home?
The river lets out at the Great Lake and there it is separated
from the sky by a line only the dead are willing to touch.
Mt. Pleasant
We identified the callery pear tree and paradise apple,
both white as cherry blossom. Grandma said this was
the first time she had sat in the garden, though she had
the best view from her bedroom window. She gave her
blessing to my sister and her boyfriend and their plans
to move to Hawaii and I admit disappointment in myself
for not being able to offer her the same.
As we left she gave me a hug and said “If I’m not here
next time you visit, you know where I’ll be,” just as she
had the last five years, but this time I think she means it.
The sun broke through the clouds on the ride home yet
the light continues to dim.
Evening Panoply 