Left on the street in my mother’s neighborhood:
children’s games, utensils,
Ethical Theory, underlined
in blue ink:
“There are certain axiomatic truths…
expected to disappear from the earth.”
But it’s not like we don’t know where my father’s ashes are!
They’re right upstairs, in his study,
where my mother dresses and undresses now.
And I can hear her hand on the banister,
sound of wind.
Soon we’ll go back out, looking for my father’s silver Avalon.
She can’t remember where she parked it.
It’s not in the cemetery we walk past
under trees full of summer fruit.
When I reach to pick one mulberry,
it comes attached to another. My mother
and I must also be looking for my father,
who turns out to have been soft and erasable,
like the #2 lead I use to write in my books,
some of which are my mother’s books,
none of which were my father’s.
I’d recognize their hands anywhere.