For Taking Leave
The mother's sister has come, her age pulled to her
like patchwork, double-crocheted with tightening crotchets.
Hard-shucked, the father has come in a hurry of day done,
passing a red bandana in front of his face and under
his chin like a torch to light him up. The mother
has entered early, her arms splinted and tied
to her side to keep her together, her gravelled eyes
locked to the spot of the wall directly above
where they always stood to say goodbye.
Brothers have seen fit, two of them, to come.
And sisters who would say a sister doesn't go away
but once and that for more than they would care to go.
They are all here, all of them or will be,
and are gathered like dust on the stuffed room,
covering rococo chairs with rococo fuss. The men,
as angular as Shakers, the women, elaborate revivals, wear
more intricate designs than they will know, the long thick
shanks and spirals of them ending where they stand.
It is their way to talk to the leaver as already left,
as a third person already lost beyond the last,
dusty glance the place might throw to draw her back.
Especially their way is not to touch those things can not
be held, so as to hold the fingers dearer in the memory,
to fathom better the phantom hugs of her they have not held.
So they lose themselves like ghosts to the stuffed room
that sweats chairs from every wall and oozes to the floor.
Like ghosts they move past her who has already left,
shaking their bonerich fingers, nodding their bonerich heads,
the father's adam's apple going like a small crow caught
in a boy's imperfect trap, the old aunt's knitting needles
clicking dismay like an egg-reft hen. It is only then
their way, for taking leave, to find the dog in need of love,
only then will they stand in line for hours, stroking the cat
until the cat gets worn right through and flops threadbare
in the corner. And the dog, like an old brown rug, lumps
on the floor from all that use, from all that pounding care.