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Brian Zimmer

Reflecting March

We move my grandmother's heavy sofa up the narrow stairs to my new apartment, mastering the struggle to maneuver it through the doorway – how, I'll never know. Thanks for your help and the use of your truck.

together in bed
curtain whispering
Bach on the night breeze

ten-year silence
nervous recorded message
you ring back

You tell your mother how under different circumstances we might have been together. I hear this later from a source thrice removed. It's true, something always abiding between us. Perhaps because we never were, I survive you.

cold spring morning
bad news on the office line
now the years

Preparing to move again, going through boxes of old papers and books, a letter of yours from the dig in Texas. You angrily denounce a friend's death at the hands of a jealous boyfriend who then turned the gun on himself. The letter marks time and place: the end's beginning.

Preferring cremation, you consent to burial to please your mother, noting the poetic justice for an archaeologist. I never see the grave but admit to satisfaction regarding it.

sun-hot boards
summer lake to ourselves
the long hike down

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