We pinch bay leaves from a tree near a house once our home, 
the owners gone, red house with a white picket fence, 
roses and a peach tree. Sometimes we don’t know a place 
until we leave, and true, too, with someone once loved, 

though perhaps loved still in the shadow- box 
where memory stores its best. So much accumulates, dust 
in the attic, stacks of old photographs, some his, 
some mine, others tossed. I’m trying to arrange my head 

without him, and although I’ve strayed from picking leaves 
from the Laurus nobilis, we, who once were, still live together 
though separate. Our daughter stuffs her pockets with bay; me on
lookout for the owners, who, without doubt, won’t mind this small trimming.

Cinnamon scented child
you called her,
when you wrapped her 
in the towel—
little mummy on your lap.

Outside, the voices of the stars
spilled around you.
This was the blessing time,
the deep seeded time.
With the towel lowered,
you ran your finger along 
the black hair down her spine.

She smelled of rain,
the same weather as you;
small suckling sounds
as she nuzzled your breast.

Snug against you she was forever.
                        

Morphined, barely breathing, my father dozed. “Place your hands in his, 
I’ll ask if he hears me,” the emergency-room nurse instructed. 

“Your daughters are here. Squeeze their hands if you understand.” I greedily 
squeezed his hand, my sister on the other side of the gurney. She finger-combed 
damp strands of hair off from his forehead. In the silence of the hospital, 
my breath wheezed.  

As though some unseen force was about to steer him loose, 
spasms rippled through our father’s arms.  But before he joined whatever 
lay ahead, he blinked as though his eyelids were speaking. Then 
his lips went slack. Confirming what we already knew, the nurse said, 
“He’s dead.” In the fluorescent lighting, I reached over, 
took my sister’s hand, held it tightly.