PDF

Counting


by Joani Reese


Three hundred and sixty-five, eight times gone.


I want to talk to you again, help you fix a fan,

pound a nail, paint a bedroom yellow.


 

We sat numb, exhausted, inarticulate


while those dark faces that surrounded you


in your dying turned, tested, timed your breaths, 


 

I picture practical watches; thick soled shoes,

and drops 
of Morphine, the gentle hospice man

who lovingly cleared 
the rattle from your throat,

eased your suffering
 while we cringed outside the door,

afraid of the tube.



 

Two thousand nine hundred twenty days.


I can't remember, was it a Monday? Thursday?


 

The pool needs patching, the ceiling, too.


Your voice remains a constant in my inner ear.


I miss your stories.


Gato Slindy, the baseball game,

the ex-lax.
The neighbor tossing filthy wash water 


from her window calling, “for the birds.”


 

Some say the forgetting begins before the first hour


recedes, as colors bleed to gray, one by one


until there are none but shades of shadow


left to trouble the air.

 

I want to show you the fence I painted,

trim a hedge with you. 
 


 

Eight autumns, eight springs.


Rain shreds the sky in silver filaments less

and less now--Last winter, hail bulleted

the pool's surface and startled the cats

from their slumber.


 

Pete's muzzle is grizzled now,

his bark tosses flute-like 
against the morning air

to frighten no one.

I am older.

 

The light seems changed, and winter blows warmer

as city buses' brakes shrill beside the house


to trouble my sleep.




I recall your nose, how prominent

and Roman 
at the end; that thin,

clarified line at the finish,




how your earlobes curled to shamrocks,

so soft beneath my fingertips,

still warm.

Endcap