-

I see my father, a trowel in hand,

Building a low wall with brick after brick and

Mortar he laid in a herringbone wedge.

He made a patio in the back yard

With a wall interrupted by steps that

He built with bricks framed by flower boxes

In which they planted geraniums

With marigolds bushy along the wall,

And a long path of bricks alternating

With steps up our back yard past the locust

Tree, enormous to me. It menaced the

House that my parents bought when I was six.

 

What I remember now is how it looked

When last I saw it nearly twenty years ago.

The cement had cracked and the bricks crumbled.

The earth having slowly

Eroded

Down

That

Steep

Hill.

9/25/2000