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An Elderly Man Reclines
His wife dies.
You have seen it all before,
you can tell what will happen next.
He will recline in the home
that she has woven around him.
He will let the ivy
of their long years together
coil around his somnambulant thoughts.
The house grows imperceptivity
into a mausoleum.
Some warmth remains,
within her carpet slippers
and housecoats.
He keeps them close.
The cat will always be
the shadow of her hand.
He is a watcher,
not at the funeral or the cemetery,
but from the other side of a bed.
He arranges ornaments,
puts them back the way they were.
Takes out fading photographs
of them both on vacation,
good times, also
times when heartbreaking rocks
had to be climbed.
He places all those sepia moments
into a shoe box
she has provided,
knowing he would need it.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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