Now, no one lives on the ridges;
houses up the hollow have slumped
into themselves and rabbits feed
above on grass in the cemetery.
After my father’s stroke, they put
him in a kind of harness at
the rehabilitation center,
advised a trip out for dinner.
On TV, which he can’t follow,
the sitcoms are about families
we don’t recognize, unfamiliar
as the reruns of The Waltons.
In the rockers on the porch I talk
to him of the willows breaking
into green above the swollen
creeks, redbuds pinking the hardwoods.
I could just as well be talking
about a dried-up town where there
was only the taste of salt for
daughters, the saccharine need for
working sons, where wearing a life
was tuneless, decent nights and days
with no thought of memorial.
I could just as well be silent.