There are three oaks in the yard.
As saplings, their translucent
branches were braided, evening
after evening, so they might grow
together, woven with years.
Inside the house, two girls & a boy wait
for their father to come to the table set
with bowls of steamy rice,
collards & pansit.
He walks into the house & washes
his hands in the kitchen sink, touching
his wife’s hands with his damp fingers
as she passes behind him. They laugh,
& later, this simple gesture of love
will be forgotten, like many others before it.
Perhaps this world survives its losses
through its forgetting.
*****
In the romance of grief,
the boy at the table stops singing
because his father silences him
with a look. They fold their hands,
bless this moment. Outside,
the leaves on the branches
look like little hands patting
the bark of white oak.
His work unfolds in the darkness.
The next evening, he must begin
again, weaving branches together.
*****
Everything is considered holy.
A portrait hanging in the corner of a room.
Boxes of old clothes, all sizes of the body
that grew & then disappeared. Its pants
& shirts, relics. Its scent of dust & mildew.
Even the white oaks are holy in their undoing
as the trunks fan away again into three
separate trees, the wind weaving between
the branches, the ghost of work.
Does it matter that the portrait looks nothing
like the girl? Does it matter that the mother
has let the clothes remain in boxes
among other boxes in a room of the house?
*****
In the romance of grief, there are rooms that remain
closed, & for this, the house closes in on the living.
What of the light outside? What of the bird lighting
on the green clothesline near the shirts & pants?
One summer, the mother walked out into the backyard
& hung damp clothes on the line.
A deer appeared at the edge of the yard & then slowly
walked toward her. The doe was nervous, its breathing
moving quickly underneath its coat of fur, & the mother
did not move as the animal approached the line
& licked the cool water dripping from one of the shirts.
*****
And happiness?
Let us say it was the moment
she came back into the house & forgot
that it ever happened at all. It was months
until she remembered again. Her son had called
& she told him the story as if it was all just
nothing.
And sadness?
Of course. It could be anything.
The season of drought. The doe so thirsty
it was unafraid of the woman taking pins
& pinching the wet cloth to the thin line
so that it would hold in the wind. Anything.
Or even the coffee she made with spoonfuls of sugar
& cream. She sat at the table, alone, & stared
at the molded tin picture of La Ultima Cena,
The Last Supper, hanging on the wall.
When she looked down at her cup,
the cream had settled to the bottom
& left only traces of itself on the surface.
And the world now?
It comes & goes
as it pleases. The wind through trees.
A doe walking back into the woods.
The settling of dust on the glass
covering a portrait, or in the grooves
of metal where all the faces are
of someone—apostles, savior,
betrayer.
© Jon Pineda
