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.
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