October, in the Workshop
       

My father is at the lathe, turning a rung
for a chair that once belonged to his mother.

It has been broken as long as I can remember,
and my grandmother has been dead for 30 years.

I am doing it, he says, because I promised her
that it would get done, and besides, I may be

the only person who remembers how it happened,
or who knows how to fix a worthless chair.

He is the diligent son, the one she depended upon
to pick the cherries, mow the grass, mend the fences.

How did it happen, I ask, and he explains, I imagine
my father used the rung of the chair as a ladder,

and I am left to decide if this is possible, if a 300 lb
man would use a chair rung in this manner, or

if my father is looking for one more splintered thing
to lay on his father's grave, here, after all these years.

Outside the workshop, beyond the shadow of the house,
acorns are dropping so steadily they sound like rain,

geese are making ragged runs, modeling the V's
that will nudge them south toward warmer water,

and the sycamores are laying down leaves, one by one,
as if they were pages ripped from some angry book.

Dad pauses for a moment, listens with a drill
in hand, and then adds, but maybe I'm being unfair...

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Copyright © 2020 Cathryn Essinger All rights reserved
from The Apricot and the Moon
Dos Madres Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission