House of Mirrors

My father walked up the hill

from the bottom of the drive

and leaned on my car, parked

at the top. He’d taken down

the trash bin on wheels for

Monday morning pickup,

things they can’t burn.

He tells me she’s going down

hill faster than he expected…

for a moment in the poem

I see the little bin get away

from him, roll into the ditch.

He cannot grasp the handle

in time, or that she is not

coming back. And some days

I cannot see that this is grief.

A gray old man leaning against

a red car, saying, “Some days

she tells me, ‘I can’t understand

what you’re saying.’” It’s like

a house of mirrors at the fair,

a fun house we pay to get into

and can’t find our way out of.

But today, we stand in the cold

spring day, quietly breathing,

loving and grieving together.

— Babs