Meghan Casey

Grandfather

He was resolute North,

tracing a glacial path

like a trench he dug between himself and the wavering world.

Even when he travelled, he carried himself on his back:

a hobbled tortoise with a mind for birdsong.

I was a child then and so he was a monument to me,

a totem pole or a thunderstruck oak.

I glimpse moments with him

in white petals stark

against the rough bark of a fallen log –

his rocking chair creaking under the blare of “Hockey Night in Canada,”

a mallard duck he made me out of wood and paint

with rubber feet that spun, slapping the ground,

a rosebush toothed with thorns,

bloodied with flowers.

I cried on the wrinkled sheets of his hospital bed

because I was ashamed of the tears seething my skin into blisters.

I don’t recall

the throb and hiss of the machine that breathed for him;

only the tubes in his tomahawk nose,

the yellow parchment of his hands

sawdust swept under the corners of doors

and dwelling in the lines around his eyes.

He was inscrutable even in his brashness;

plotting trajectories to the sky,

he could not comfort us.

My mother came in

walking as though she were underwater.

She led me out to the hallway

where the nurses pushed empty gurneys

and politely

disregarded me

as I pressed my bowed back into the plastic chair

and sobbed

because I was already losing ways of remembering him.

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Casey