Elegy for Anthony

When grandpa died I couldn’t cry.

Now I remember his smile as he baked,
eyes wrinkled as he served hot slices
of pound cake to my sister and I.

I remember his aged hands
sweeping mandolin strings,
breathing into folk songs,
the way he’d carefully trace stocks in black ink
without risking a cent.

At the funeral I couldn’t tell if it was day or night,
fluorescent light on my mother’s face
ribboned with tears. At the end she pressed
a cool sponge to his dry lips,
his bedroom dark behind the curtained windows.

His strained smile cracked like earth as he remembered
a marriage cleaved by death,
a lifetime of waking and sleeping,
of long kisses and hurried goodbyes,
seasons that seemed to last forever,
and then silence.

He left his body at home
like an old shirt.

I couldn’t cry. I could only feel
the weight of his dream braided with mine,
the strange sight of a good man
lowered into earth.