Memorial Day

The sun has gone at last,
leaving the bayou dull and pewter,
the last light caught in the trees
like something already remembered.

Memorial Day ends
without ceremony.
No bugle, no flag lowered,
only the kitchen darkening

and the question coming again:
is my mother still alive?
Somewhere, perhaps, she breathes
in a room I cannot enter.

Or does she not?
The thought stands there
with its hat in its hand,
too polite to say more.

What century is it today?
Not this one, surely.
Not the bright age of messages,
green dots, delivered signs,

the little tyrannies of knowing.
Tonight feels older than that,
as if pain has mistaken the road
and taken me back

to 1800, say,
when silence had a reason,
when a man could wait for the post
and not be humiliated by hope.

A horse somewhere.
A muddy lane.
A letter sealed and carried
through weather and distance.

Days passed then
without explanation.
Love disappeared into geography
and everyone understood.

No one checked a phone.
No one watched a blank screen
pretending it was neutral.
Absence wore boots,

crossed rivers, broke axles,
slept at inns, arrived late
with news already yellowing
inside its folded paper.

I almost envy them that.
Their waiting had shape.
Their silence came from miles,
from storms, from winter roads,

not from the living choosing
not to answer,
not from heaven’s clean refusal
to make itself plain.

The squirrels have vanished now.
The branches settle back
into their old indifference.
The house holds its breath.

I stand in the remains
of an American holiday,
thinking of the dead,
thinking of the not dead,

thinking of children
who live somewhere beyond me,
and of my mother
fading or not fading

in the unlit country
where all messages go.
For a while I am no one modern.
No password. No signal.

Only a man at evening,
waiting for the post,
listening to the enormous silence
as if it might yet arrive.