Bacon

Day spills into evening, sun over a narrow bay,
white sand, slap-dance waves. It’s trash
in the gravel I notice. Flattened soda cans

glisten outside the guest house. My eyes slide
to the surface of water and mallards sullen
in blonde grass. I’m frying bacon, brewing tea.

I hear the stars are especially good here, prodigal
glittering in the deep basin of night. When I was
a child, Dad stood at the stove to pour bacon fat

into a coffee can, snowdrifts in shadows
outside the windows, Mom at the table beside me.
Her ashes are next to Dad in the cheapest

part of a graveyard. Waves splash up, then back off,
wait for the onrush of darkness. What I hear,
houselights low, sounds like a person breathing.

Header photograph © Eon Alden.