Rehearsing the Death of My Father
by Derek Ellis
In the garden there is snow where there once was
snow & the sun fades into the trees.
Faded light inches across leftover lawn
chairs from a summer barbeque—
what do you do when weather holds
& life persists—when you turn & find
only the thick fog from the river filling
the field? What now can be kept secret—.
I keep quiet and do not move. Somewhere
between garden & field,
in the middle distance, my father hauls
a deer carcass behind him.
His lumbering shape becoming almost
formless, almost lost, as I bend
over this desk. Alone in the snow that was
always snow, in the sleeping garden—
My father fails to meet me.