On the way home from the hospital
my father cried at the wheel
so, I looked away at the orange vapor
streetlights, a crow perched
on an overhead powerline,
the ghostly glide of a milk float.
A winter’s morning swallowed
by a rear-view mirror.
This afternoon, I read of whale bones
discovered deep inland, everyday pottery
vessels cradling Dead Sea Scrolls,
scarab amulets for the dead.
But what became of the scuffed
brown box in the bottom
of the wardrobe where my mother
kept her own mother’s mementoes?
Over time, my grief has become desert.
At some point, to navigate, I walked away
from the campfire chatter
and stepped into its hazy vastness
waited for the synchronised avalanche
of sand grains. Their monastic humming,
their shifting sighs, their slow crashing
waves of percussion.
