Empty

For Virginia Flaherty

It may surprise you like a milk snake
beneath a pile of rock or loom like a
red-tailed hawk above the dry creek bed
but there will be a last time and you will wish
to be pressed against her cheek one more time,
to roll her arm as if you were a baker with a pin,
to linger in the damp soil, her fingers
entwined with yours and the worms,
to say yes to an English muffin when you
really don’t want one, it may surprise you,
it may loom as you sit at the maple table of your youth
weaving an image of her moving through this space,
rooms warp where you knew and loved her,
a breath away from a new inhabitant, it may surprise you,
as it did me, the permanence, the hollow goodbye
as you close the door, but there will be a last time.

Summer of 2013