Start with the granite stones
laid at the base of the white post fence
with grapevines wound through.
Someone had to place them there.
Go to the English Ivy
trained up the green slate wall,
sheltered even in winter.
How hard would it be
to stay in one place, year after year,
locked into family
and father? Every day
is a prop against leaving,
until you feel the weight upon you:
sour water in the plastic wading pool,
the play-worn spot
where grass will never grow.
Some day it will all come crashing down,
and you will think,
I must give up to save myself.
Look at the terraced yard
where the weeping willow
has shrugged off its leaves.
I’ve left, too.
The light has retreated into windows,
and the day has put its color away.
Someone will have to go back
and pick up what has fallen.  

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previously published in Minnesota Monthly, June 1998

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James Cihlar’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Bloom, Minnesota Monthly, The James White Review, and in the anthologies Aunties (Ballantine) and Regrets Only (Little Pear Press). In 2000 he won a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship for Poetry. With a BA from the University of Iowa and a PhD from the University of Nebraska, he has taught at the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point and at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
E-mail: jcihlar at earthlink dot net
Website: http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/cihlar.htm
 

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