Span
She was there, silent as a rag doll.
I unpinned her calendar from the wall.
A busy year until early May—
a hair appointment the very day
someone took her out in a bag.
Years were crumbs, absence sound.
She didn’t say a word. I heard her
everywhere. You watched
from the window but she
didn’t appear. When we arrived
and opened the door
for a second I believed
she’d just run to the store.
She wasn’t coming back.
Or hadn’t completely gone,
I couldn’t tell. With my finger
I upset the little bells on the porch,
expecting to hear her call my name.
Instead, the kids wanted to know—
Dad, can we watch a show?
and scattered to the blue corners
of her couch. I occupied
an empty chair, surveyed the room:
wool blankets she threw
over the bannister, the quiet
Baldwin upright in the corner.
Her collection of keys
in a basket on the piano bench.
She never told me what they meant.
*
Jeff McRae’s poems have appeared in The Maynard, Massachusetts Review, Antioch Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Salamander, The Briar Cliff Review, Mudfish, Rattle, and elsewhere. He lives in Vermont.
