Michigan
I know my grieving self too well.
Yet the plank board barn
stands in snowy hills.
The heater whirs in the rented dash.
That bird, flown north,
spirals past the
curve in the road
toward the barn,
at this,
the first Spring melt.
Water and earth, suck and slog;
the sky whistles through
slatted walls;
brazier light
trained to the cracks
strikes the dirt barn floor,
where lifted high on two-by-fours
blotched, discolored,
but shaped to the eye
so even blind
my hands remember
how they touched
her sweeping, unhurried curves,
the body of my father's Ford.
The hills,
the barn,
the circling bird,
remains of a car
off a country road,
tribute offered, tribute deferred
reasons to take the long way home.