Jack

Mom’s cold hands putting laundry on the line
on a November morning. Or that cold wreck,
the rained on frame of a rust-yellow bus
that sleeps like a bull’s back beside the road.
Or those few mornings in December, when
the impatient torrent which sees an Autumn pass
is soothed, and fields hang bare in a still sun.
Yes, all your children know me well. I often
freeze the grounded butterflies of their
last dreams, and chill them into wakefulness.
Your elderly recall me in their bones,
because I await them there, sleeping like
a sparkle on the grass that no new dawn
will ever melt. In you I’m just a tone,
an attitude, a chilliness of speech
that reeks of unconcern, but sometimes breaks
like light through a hoar gray mess of branches,
puncturing your mind with soft emotions
unearthed by some small tenderness your wife
comes out with like an apple pulled shining
from a pile of moldy leaves. Then, perhaps,
you drive to work, beneath the handsome brick
of many country bridges and past the wonders
of simple meadows you so often fail
to really recognize, smiling a bit,
but with a quivering in your depths that feels
like birch-gold barely clinging to a branch,
because you know where all my patient lessons
end: the churchyard with its frosted stones.