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Among My Father’s Belongings |
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Stephanie Walker
We undertook the goliath task
of sorting through his possessions—
our father’s life through his things—
parsing them out like rations of memory.
Here was every birthday card and crayoned letter,
mixed in among every kind of saw and shovel,
a wooden carving of a shepherd, and there,
in the dark corners of his desk,
his chemo pills and five smooth stones.
The pills he refused, as David had done
with Saul’s gilded armor—their faith lay instead
in a hope for psalms and in those stones,
polished by the current of an Israeli brook.
We rolled them over in our hands.
That day, we left a little heavier,
stones in our pockets for our own raging giants.
I thought of those stones when old-testament hail fell,
grief-heavy and fist-sized,
on my late summer garden.
The winter vegetables, which I had hoped for
like the rain and patience that promised them, were gone.
I pulled their severed vines weeks later,
tugging, following them like a prophecy
across the path, into the shade of a sturdy bush
where I discovered five green and golden-red acorn squash,
smooth and cool—five rare and singular mercies.
Stephanie Walker lives in Minnesota with two very charming cats and one occasionally charming man. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast and Swivel and is forthcoming in So To Speak.
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