Uncle Denny Flood
That summer we helped
the niece carry out his life
in bushels to be burned
like rotted corn scooped
from an nearly empty bin.
The sitting room lay in amber
the year's of Argus'
to the side of the chair
in a tableau of someone just
gone, gone to answer our knock
at the front door.
The dinning room lay in lace
that clung to the table
mimicking the vines that still raise
the burnt brick Presbyterian Church next door.
The room is in anticipation of us
and those before, and before.
Surely he has just stepped out
in some final preparation.
The heavy drawn curtains made
to hold the sun & town at bay,
stood at dusty attention
encapsulating all there was to see
all there was to hold,
all there was to possess.
This was a house of postcards,
neatly written letters,
nameless photographs,
abandoned fruit & meat & bread
food past recognition,
jars of fetal pigs that once were beans
canned in anticipation of prairie winter,
the smell of all that is old & forgotten,
and no one left to remember.
This was a house not just
to hold one's life
but one's lifetime.
We were guests in this house,
the host excused by death.
We could not posses by mere presence
what has been another's
held their power and weakness,
held their dreams and travail.
It was left to us to dispose, and
to dispossess the house from the life
and to fling the ashes into the wind.
I was always there looking from my window
into the adult night,
at the dim light on a long cord
that gently swung as if someone
walked back & forth across the room.
I do not know a thing except what I saw
by the common windows which we shared.
There was never a hand at the window
to gage what the day would bring
or judge the winter's passing.
Never a sign, but that dim light
that swung like the gentle rocking
of a baby's cradle or the strained arms
of six men lowering his casket down.
Lansing
September 21, 1987
Greenfield Series
©1987 Uncle Denny Flood — Joseph W. Yarbrough
Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
the niece carry out his life
in bushels to be burned
like rotted corn scooped
from an nearly empty bin.
The sitting room lay in amber
the year's of Argus'
to the side of the chair
in a tableau of someone just
gone, gone to answer our knock
at the front door.
The dinning room lay in lace
that clung to the table
mimicking the vines that still raise
the burnt brick Presbyterian Church next door.
The room is in anticipation of us
and those before, and before.
Surely he has just stepped out
in some final preparation.
The heavy drawn curtains made
to hold the sun & town at bay,
stood at dusty attention
encapsulating all there was to see
all there was to hold,
all there was to possess.
This was a house of postcards,
neatly written letters,
nameless photographs,
abandoned fruit & meat & bread
food past recognition,
jars of fetal pigs that once were beans
canned in anticipation of prairie winter,
the smell of all that is old & forgotten,
and no one left to remember.
This was a house not just
to hold one's life
but one's lifetime.
We were guests in this house,
the host excused by death.
We could not posses by mere presence
what has been another's
held their power and weakness,
held their dreams and travail.
It was left to us to dispose, and
to dispossess the house from the life
and to fling the ashes into the wind.
I was always there looking from my window
into the adult night,
at the dim light on a long cord
that gently swung as if someone
walked back & forth across the room.
I do not know a thing except what I saw
by the common windows which we shared.
There was never a hand at the window
to gage what the day would bring
or judge the winter's passing.
Never a sign, but that dim light
that swung like the gentle rocking
of a baby's cradle or the strained arms
of six men lowering his casket down.
Lansing
September 21, 1987
Greenfield Series
©1987 Uncle Denny Flood — Joseph W. Yarbrough
Reproduction prohibited without written permission.