A green-burn howl
slithers along the pavement
slick with rain and fallen Cassia buds.
My father’s corpse was
dragged reluctant
through these streets, dry as a winter sheath,
coarse and brown like
a crumble of leaves,
stale-smelled, arranged into neatness.
The walls of his
house, once white, turned pink,
rosed with the seep of his blood in crannies.
The beams loosened and
started in sudden fits.
The pillars leaned together in sighs.
Sometimes when I wake
at first light,
cold with thirst, the rattle of wind in my chest,
I look to left and
right for a hand that moves,
prick ears for the swung window, the rustle
near the old
grandfather’s clock with the round
face, and am never quite sure that it’s not there.