Ten Years
by Nancy Adams
Today I walked to class underneath your black umbrella.
Black, like the skirt I wore to your funeral,
The skirt that mom could never bear to see me wear again.
Why is white the color I see on you?
The white of a dress shirt
Even while cutting the grass
Or teaching me the art of catch—
The arc of a fat, white, softball;
The sting of the palm of my left hand,
In the cold sun, the clean keening leaves in our nose.
Or I see your back
The white shirt creased like a sail—
Surging ahead in a crowd, too fast to catch.
My mind knows better.
Why do I still look
For you, without my knowing.
The questions I never asked you
Spring up unasked for, like grass from the
Dark and empty earth.
More of them, not less with time.
What did it do to you,
The day the baby was born that never drew breath?
What nights drunk in strange towns,
When you were on the road for work?
I never asked you how you filled those hours.
You didn’t say.
