PICTURE FRAMES

When I’m in my reading and sleeping chair,
the one where I drink my first cup of coffee,
I look over at the many pictures standing
on the china cabinet or dining room hutch,
even though it’s placed in our living room.

There’s a baby picture of me in black and white.
One of my wife too, as if we grew up together.
It could have been possible since we’re born
just 25 days apart in the Summer of Love, 1967.
On the bottom shelf I notice how many photos
there are now of our little family, with our son.

As the sun rises slowly in September, I think about
how he is a little bit bigger inside each of the frames.
Soon there will be a picture on this shelf with him
as tall as me, maybe taller, surely towering above
his mother in the pose he always calls a family hug.

And when I sit here a few years from now
in this same chair, drinking from the same mug,
I will be overwhelmed with joy for the life we have,
saddened to know that we won’t see our boy today,
it will be time for the young man to go away.

IF THERE IS A HEAVEN

And I hope there is and don’t feel upset or
agitated by me saying this now to all of you.
I feel better about missing him, thinking about
him hearing someone shout,“Hon’y, you made it!”
His tall slender cousin will rise up from one knee
toss his cigarette away, and smile his beautiful
chipped tooth smile under a bristly moustache.

And if there is a heaven, his brother will be ready
to go fishing, running the roads, chasing after girls
on Saturday night. His sister will open the squeaky
porch door and he’ll enter the home of his parents.
His mom will be rolling biscuits out on the counter,
cutting out little circles with them with a jelly jar.
His dad will be loading up the wood stove and
after an “Aye Law”, curl up in his brown recliner.

He’ll have a sup of coffee from the kitchen and
this time they won’t say to him-“Stay with us!”
because they’ll know he’ll be with them forever.
In the evening, he’ll walk out to water the roses,
check on the horses, slice open a green tomato and
be forced to make a difficult choice, each time.
Should he go coon hunting with the redbone, Jack
or bear hunting with the Treeing Walker dog, Albert.

The dogs will howl, and he’ll run on with them
up and down the slopes of pristine mountains,
into green valleys full of wildflowers and he’ll remark
with his signature smirk, “This must be heaven ‘cause
it’s almost as pretty as the Great Smoky Mountains.”