The old farmhouse in Belleville,

rambling and reeking

of history that wasn’t mine,

possibilities of what might come

out of nothing.  I covered the seeping walls

a deep dark red.

Weeds overtook the house, snaking the dirty siding, the garden out back where previous owners grew green peppers and corn which made their way to the summer table,

now dry as  dust. That old lady,

her children gone from where she was. Years ago,

her husband and childhood that would never come

to fruition; the land out back,

the railroad tracks, rusting ladders

for miles. On summer nights

the trains lulled her life.

I knew I knew I knew she now said

stumbling the city block, the houses gray,

their windows –like people’s lives–mawing open.

 

 

 

 

It has been almost 28 years

since my father died

when I was 28.  Then the cold shock of it

caught me by surprise.  I looked at him–

younger than I am now–

sitting at the old Formica table,

the clutter of his life all around: crystal-glass

ashtrays overflowing with tobacco

from the pipe he always smoked, endless

papers stacked on the desk in the corner

where my father sat night after night tabulating

the course of our lives.  Even the cracked and worn

linoleum sagged with the weight of it.  The old house already dying

around him; his garden out back where he toiled

in city summers, cucumbers and tomatoes

lining the kitchen sill where they sat until ripened.  I still remember

that moment watching my father

his eyes already glazed, gazing

out the window looking for something, already knowing

it would never bear fruit.