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950w.455s
Rita Herman
Robert Moore watched it burn and I never did.
It was my greatest fear, hope, prayer
to watch red lick the dappling gray and
strike a match on the clapboards
odd pitched roofs, cold drafty hinges
porchkitchenfrontandbedroomsbathroom
suck in search of oxygen
And I never did.
Flat. Mailboxless, across the road barrowpit coalash remains
Gone. Legendary apricot tree pitted from grandmother 's orchard,
rhubarb, soft purple lilacs protecting irises
Intertwined yellow roses, snowballs, gooseberry bramble
Apple trees where farmers played farmer and fallen collar bones broke
No more. Climbing through white picket fences for white balls in alfalfa
baseballs, croquet, footballs, and once golf,
upright guardian railroad ties
Gone. Green flooded acres where I lay face down as my parents watched
The stages of life
and burnt in the burning barrel all the remains
of passages from Heyburn, Paul and Rupert.
Flat. Where I took a picture three years after it had burned
When nothing remained.
Except every day in the mirror I see
the cut in my eyebrow from
Louis and the croquet mallet,
and inside David whispers "we were surrounded by love."
Carl's stars may still have aliens
and Lee and Curt and Dean and Eldie and Albie
and I
have freckles trying to tan like the
bronze gods my brothers were
from wide open spaces that a
heartbeat never misses.
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