LOIS MARIE HARROD
MY MOTHER TELLS MY FATHER
HE CAN DIE NOW
In the center of sumac let me cut
the sun that you kept tied to your wrist
like a watch: come, let us watch it float
above the hills until it disappears like dawn.
Like this world. Like its deep leaves.
You were the man that parted me in the field
and I, the woman that revoked your sabbatical:
come, no more malingering in the weeds.
For I have trimmed the wet moss
and made you a shirt to cover the stone,
I have touched your skull through your skin.
Come, lay everything down like a sheet
and we will breathe the leaves on the wind,
the walnut, the maple, the oak, the ash.
