There’s no need to be worried. We’ve been this way
before, and always found the way back home.
On better days, we walked the field beyond that brush,
around a track edged by Jerusalem sage and wild
oats. I remember you were young. I remember
this road. Maybe the heart is deceitful, a lover
of cruelty, but the eyes know where the patterns lie.
The intentions of the mind are always good.

See now, here at the end of this line of trees,
the path leads up the hill, to where we left the car.
And you can see how desperate, how wicked,
the heart is. It tries to make them tall and splendid
sycamores – or a line of graceful poplars – while
the mind sees ragged, messy eucalyptus.
The limbs grow too heavy for their own good,
and break off in hard weather.

The clock in the living room is weary,
needs winding. Then we can sit
through the long evening quietly and listen
to its voice. You remember how it was,
when Papa was alive and late at night
the house was still. And in the small hours,
with no sound but the breathing and snoring
of us all, this clock would chime. Just once,
then twice, and on until the sun came up.

It helps to burn a candle for chopping onions.
Unless you want to cry. I think I might, a little,
but let’s have the candle anyway. A little light
to help us see the problem here. There’s no wine
to pour and let breathe, no bread to cut thickly,
butter, set by on the stove to warm
while we bake the fish we caught today.

Again we see how the heart lies, buries
the truth in a special corner of the yard,
where we change the flowers year to year.
You know as well as I we never fished today,
and whatever goes with these onions
was trucked in cold, deep frozen.

No need to set the table for just one,
since the mind knows you got old and sick
and died. But I can stand for it.
I know the families of trees by how
they turn the wind. The pathway
home is marked by broken sand.

© 2005 by J. Kyle Kimberlin
3rd draft, 10/23/05