Inside the Room

There's not much to notice: against the far wall

an old piano, and taped up beside it

a fly-specked old poster: Our Wildlife

in Pennsylvania. A few shadows

go over the floor, the dark

abstractions attached

to the geese crying overhead, those keeping

to pattern. You move further in,

and what's outside slides away

as if down the sheer face of a cliff.

Your shoes pinch. It's quiet. Then through the doorway

returning in a long

full skirt, your mother, dead eight years, not quite

as you'd remembered: a little

giddy, heavier in the arms, but somewhat

musical,

she who never sang coming forward smiling with a broom. Are you

almost done in here? Excuse me—

so polite, then vanishing. It takes

a long time. The sky's suddenly overcast. A wind

rises against the walls

and there's the sound of thunder approaching,

a heavy rain. Still, though the storm's

torrential, it's an occurrence

in weather, something you assume happens, meaning

it begins

and ends. So you listen there at the edge

of a great emptiness

for the arrival of silence,

the ending, the slow opening.