Listening for the Dead	

I.

My father's death surprised him 
as much as anyone.
A stroke they said, like his mother before him.
No warning except for an aching neck
the day before.  He didn't know what a headache was,
said my mother, who'd suffered from migraines
all her life.  He was preparing 
for bed one night, thinking perhaps
of Hallowe'en candy, in case the grandchildren came.
Or planning, at last, a Florida winter.
My mother heard him fall.

By the time I drove across town to the old stuccoed house, 
there was my father, who'd vowed to leave this world
a tidy place, debt-free, being carried out 
in a blanket, a doctor as old as himself
struggling to keep those cold, pale feet 
from bumping the stairs.
Don't look, someone said.  Or perhaps 
I imagined they said it.
Toward morning, we tried to sleep—
I on the couch in the living room,
my disbelieving mother, and my grandmother, 
who lived with them and needed us both
to help her up the stairs.
I kept listening for him 
but the shadows were shocked into silence.


II.

The winter after he died, his slippers whispered 
across the carpet, the way they did
when, at four, I lay on my stomach, shading
Rapunzel's hair with my favourite jumbo pink crayon.
He stood at the kitchen phone, 
receiver to ear in voiceless dialogue.  
Perhaps in repeating daily rituals 
he would discover that nothing had changed.

Early the following May, I dreamed that he sat 
at a banquet table, eating cake with strangers.  
I called to him, but he rose
and walked away into dazzling air.
Wait!  Take me with you!   I called.
He turned and held out his hand: Not yet— 
the light an ovation of white beyond him.  
I woke, his hand still nudging mine.
Why hadn't I said, Come back?


III

My mother takes flowers to the cemetery 
in containers she knows won't get stolen.  
Is she thinking 
how the lilacs she brings brush her cheek 
like fingertips of the dead,
how my grandmother's mouth opens like a bird's,
waiting for ice cream?