Residue
The pewter tray on my buffet; three dainty, crystal white wines (my younger daughter broke the fourth playing cocktail party); in my golf bag, a putter nearly a foot too long for me; on the shelf above the tub, a rubber duck I bought to keep you company during your inordinately long times in the bathroom.
In the attic, a candy box full of drink stirrers, wine corks, theater tickets, a few letters, a ramshackle, old, resort hotel on a postcard— funny cards that say, I love you.
A handsome couple in a photograph: She laughs at him. He drinks champagne from her shoe.
Irrelevant residue. Dusty treasures. All that’s left of you.
Winter Colors
Allie, allie in free Distant voices, strangers’ children.
In the shrubbery winter birds crack seed from a neighbor’s feeder.
Tangled, leafless, dogwood twigs slice across an icy early April sky the blue of Siberian Squill, the azure of a Nordic eye, the hue of a nursery blanket.
Dividing the trees, late winter’s slanting light leads on toward home.
It will be silent there. The feeder hangs unfilled.
Our lightning-shattered willow’s roots have rotted into food for next month’s bright new grass— the glaring color of last year’s Easter basket cellophane.
Terry W. Ford