Still ~~ anna hood

Rain on the tin roof
makes him remember
as do the shivering poplars
that line the lane.
Their long sepia shadows
twine his legs
as he sits evenings
under their branches.
The one-eared grizzled tom
she'd found starving
in the barn keeps him company.

She'd painted them, the poplars.
At dusk their outstretched wrists
hold the sky
and pale birds, their gleaming breasts
swollen with song that wake him
when daylight is still
a foreign country.
The painting, now above
the fireplace, the ghosty smell
of turpentine turns his blood
to tar.

Her voice
in the sea sound of a shell
the sadness of some horn
wailing a blues song
down on the delta
in their daughter's laugh
sets his heart careening
into the wind that wrestles the clouds
she painted.

He was full of her
like a religion.
Like a beautiful song of faith.
He wanted to enfold her
forever in his arms
his wings
but one summer morning
the air shifted her last breath
into a thousand molecules
haloes of golden light.

The cat paces
waits for her return
still in her thrall.