Concrete and Mortar

I dreamed I was running backward, through fields 
and woods, feeling as though I was about to 
crash into a rock or a tree, or fall into 
a river and be swept away. But still I ran on.
The windows in our bedroom this morning are dusted
with pollen that smells like damp mushrooms, or like
pipe tobacco in a rarely-opened drawer.
The wild coffee is blooming too, and full of buzzing bees.
Your father has died, two thousand miles away.
The mortar anchoring the bricks of the house 
he built with his father, the house you grew up in, 
has been crumbling away, falling back to sand.
The workshop he built himself in the back yard
will be pulled down; all his tools will be scattered.
We were married in that back yard. Even the mountains
are slowly coming down. I remember that basement,
the cool darkness where your brother slept the days away, for years.
I remember your mother making cards and gifts down there.
Everything is secret, or else it wouldn’t need to be.
Everything is waiting. Certain days we couldn’t see
the mountains from your parents’ street. Other days they loomed.

Michael Hettich | Mudlark No. 40 (2010)
Contents | This Burning