scratch
the wind rustles the pages of my father’s diaryand searches his blank blue fields-
it is the old routine.
“you never throw anything out”
she says “you didn’t clear out
the basement. if it floods-" she says. we could use the rain.
the porch creaks under the weight.
beneath the earth churns endlessly
digesting remainders, gestating tomorrow’s buds.
in last night’s dream rare night of sleep a doctor said to me
memory is in the handshe spared excising them in the surgery because memory is in the hands.
I sit here trying to decode
his chicken scratch till
there is no enough longer light to read by
the letters separating into abstraction
the dark slowly uncovering
the insatiable soil indefatigable weeds
until the skinny rooster climbs
to his perch atop this man’s barn
and squawks out his wordless call
which I can only take to mean
wake up
and do the work again