She stands on the front porch,
Looks through the moving truck
To the east,
Expecting the sun to rise
In the late afternoon;Her glasses clogged
With box-cutting dust
And scratched
By the absence of
Not even a door of hanging beads
To keep her distance
From the warmth
Inside;
Now she is outside,
The cement as unforgiving
As the lawyers pen,
Cracks between the lines
Indecipherable
To none but the author
And bricklayers
With white collar trawls;
Inside,
the movers
Call her,
A dresser limps along the hall;
They want her to take responsibility
Should it stumble,
She brushes it off
As casually
As she does the wine bottles
Behind the curtains,
An odd place to keep a collection,
Particularly when they are all half empty
Inside;
The maple tree
On the front lawn
Splits down one side,
Leans awkwardly towards the south
Away from the driveway
Like it knows
The cold weather is coming
And wont leave for many years to come;
Like the morning after
A dresser shaking bout
And the lies flew
Like snow flurries
In July,
Summer wont be back
After this spring move,
It wont be the first time
The calendar has lied,
Nor its minions,
The triumvirate
Of clock hands,
Traversing the worst
Of white water lies
Along their tongues
Like paddles
Without torsos
Or grandfathers
To pray to,
They recount
What didn’t happen
Last night
With alacrity
Until summer and morning
Climb the rails and disappear,
Leaving no forwarding address
For the moving truck
To follow.
The driver
Grinds the gears
As the truck
Turns up
The steep hill
Heading north;
She sighs;
In the west
The sun melts
Like the ice cream
In the moving truck,
Alone
Inside the stillborn freezer,
Willing to sacrifice its life
If the cohesion
Of light and warmth
Could bring back morning
And shake
The taste of gravel
From their mouths.
Copyright ©2009 Bruce Millar
