A cardinal in a lilac beside the parking lot
snapped its insistent note. The air was damp.
My brother settled a box of half-eaten pies
into the back of his dark blue SUV, laughing
at something someone nearby had said.
We’d come out of the community center, all of us,
family, friends, some we hadn’t seen since 1973,
full of pie and remembrances of our father,
and my brother would drive his long drive home,
nothing anywhere on the calendar ever
to bring us together again. He would have
driven off without saying goodbye—just as
my stepmother and stepsister had done—
a blunt clapping closed, a locking up. But
I insisted and hugged him, not a hug of care
or even of sadness, a simple shuttering, as if
a light rain had begun or as if a middle-aged
man had passed pushing a wheelbarrow
of manure. Something had to be protected.
Dignity, perhaps. The cardinal had flown.
The air was damp with the smell of lilacs.
