Elegy

i.m. my father, 1940–2009

sway skyward branches     autumn grist
at the kissing gate     the quiet of
chirp rustle caw     brown going weeds

amid late mulberries     I can’t see
all I hear     here’s seeming stoic
yellow yellow leaf     all birdnotes

in the distance     won’t be long
green’s emerging skeletons
held up plenty all this

to know the breeze is cold yet     a sky
of slow streaming cloud     one kiss going
one for return     measure

in the near chill

Kennet and Avon

My father cycles along the Kennet and Avon Canal like many another English grandfather except that he is American and does not trail the Sunday revelers but leads the race in which only he tunnels into the wind, only he does not pause to glimpse the dark narrow boats and muse about the origins of their names, Emily and Dog’s Day and Jenny Wren, only he cycles into flight, so that when I see him ten, twenty yards downstream and diminishing, only he is and is not cycling along the Kennet and Avon, through a country he’s never seen.