Trust, like love,
comes on the clouds
in a sky rarely round and flat as a plate of Wedgewood blue.
It carries its essence in the mystery of a distant storm,
in a darkness unknown,
the ache of loss filling its skirts
with a gentle rain or
eventual flood,
promising hope.
Trust, like love,
offers its divine presence,
pouring out its mist or its torrent
in wonton ways.
The way is not mine to choose, only
whether to stand,
head tipped to sky,
and ask for more.
I sit in the light of two fluorescent bulbs –
one flickering above the workbench,
the other swinging over the washer and dryer –
and wonder over my nest, soon bare.
Here in the garage,
with only the leftover laundry to stir my memory,
I find fewer cues to catapult my heart.
Inside,
boxes sit, ready for college,
with hangers perched atop taped cardboard,
bound in bakers bundles like so many necessary soldiers.
Pillows piled, alongside dish drainers,
and vacuums for second year;
each an undeveloped portrait.
Everywhere I turn, vestiges of yesterday taunt me.
Pictures uncovered in the clean out,
set beside the sofa in a reused box;
third grade recitals rescued alongside
our first television set and an old turn table.
These objects wait hopefully
eager to audition for the leading role
in this latest play.
For now they sit, still and quiet, before the hearth,
in tidy rows, named and claimed,
while temperatures outside soar to summer heights.
I leave
the comfort of what I know, move
away from the collect of this latest change
(in truth it has me swallowing stones)
and find solace on the dusty concrete of the garage.
I sit,
sweat threatening my spine,
in an old blue game chair,
rocking too and fro,
while their father collects cords
and ropes,
coiling them, hanging them,
tying us, surely, to what was and
what will be.
