 | ||
| Ancestor Bundle/Micron and watercolor |
cubbies behind bookcases.
Linen closet, white-painted
shelves, the medicine cabinet,
neatly labeled under-bed storage cases,
great hat boxes, the hall closet, pop beads,
empty hangers, cards and thank you notes.
.
Unfinished laundry, curled carbon paper,
family photos labeled and unlabeled,
gifts from strangers, her
button box, sheet music. Beneath basement stairs his
shoe polish, black, brown, blood of ox.
Awards and plaques, the ice cream salt.
Taking two years to sort with trowel and sifter,
Every last item designated, consigned, presented, donated,
divided, burned, recycled, restored,
sold, traded, flushed, shredded, consumed.
Until left with only one remaining task:
The Safe.
Hulking on back porch, door ajar
empty but still declaring “this safe is not locked,"
“It contains no valuables,” printed on index card.
And so it sat. My brother and I, facing it off, announced
that Matt Walker of his eponymous auto repair
would move the thing. We asked.
And three months passed.
He was unmoved, it was unmoved.
Until, July. Eyed, measured, wrestled, lifted, hoisted,
hooked, backed and pulled
that dark mass dangling on his wrecker
out through detached back door,
down painted concrete steps
over stones and slowly through the
street to that garage
where we had set pallet of bricks to hold
its considerable weight. And we were done.
Except for ruts behind their house that stretched
from down-spout to hill where pear tree
used to be, for hooking hinges on peeling-paint
door, and for erasing one large unpainted square
shimmering, shimmering on floor of that finally
irrevocably and undeniably empty back porch.
No comments:
Post a Comment