A Wet Sunday

My wife has borne me a son.
I am forced to add up the years
that survey the road from my father’s hand,
from that first resounding gesture
to a gesturing man
lost in his own remembrance.
It does not seem long.

Death carries me in her arms,
not so stiff or cold
as I might have once imagined.
She brings me to try new skills
as a mother would,
letting my life withdraw
to its war with words.

It is fearful the belated penance
a son must do
and I fear for my own son’s ending.
I sit in church and think
if his life were ended,
mine begun anew:
how the image of death would alter.

She would sit in the pew beside me
with a nodded head
and beg for some needed vision.
Death is not drunk,
but death as a childless woman,
so incongruous, so exact,
terrifies me.

I watch branches cast their shadows
upon clear panes,
leaves moving in unison choirs
and am ashamed.
The rain come after a dry spell
and a winter thaw
should not leave me so disconsolate.
The deeper ground refuses to be wet.