The McLeods
Remembering Julia Pasquale
entering the cool January garden
in the house’s shadow
unready I begin to see you as I saw you last
sun-lit and pivoting on the balls of your feet
crouching pleasant and quiet in your beauty
reaching and leaning and digging
I am low now where you were low
my hands where your hands were
my knees in the dirt of your knees
as I dead head the pansies you planted
my cold face hangs where your face hung
cheek to cheek
I begin to feel lost
the smoke-soft vibrating firmament of place
causes me to regard my self
indistinguishable from these ripples of you
it makes me as a pack mule
carrying this heavy indistinction
as I walk to the front of the house and
I look through the bare branches
into the colored light of the late sky
as I am certain you had done right here at least once
Robbie Wood lives in Richmond, Va. with his wife, and four cats. His work has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, Half and One, Jimson Weed, and The Clinch Mountain Review.