How many perfect days are there in a life—
the air soft, the breeze moving through elm trees
in a slow dance of late summer? My mother
and I lounging in the grass over
my father’s grave. I thought it would be sad
but we swept the grass clippings off his stone
and admired the Celtic cross. The simple lines
of his name, his birth, his death.
I poured water from my Starbucks cup
to clear the mud from the engraved letters,
the ground had settled during the year. For a while
my mother confessed, I just wanted to be with him
but now I’m not ready to go. We held hands
and then we were quiet for a long while,
listening to the locusts and the leaves and the hum
of traffic on Algonquin Road. Leaning back on our arms,
our legs stretched out before us. You know,
I finally said, he was usually right
and my mother responded, I was just thinking that.
Then we remembered how he loved
lemon meringue pie. That man of few words.
We patted the ground, from time to time, ran our palms
over the short grass, as if it was his body.