Saul Bennett
Nothing
In the shack we share
in the woods near the house
my daughter and I convene.
She died four years ago almost
suddenly, twenty-four, leaving us,
younger brother, sister. Our children came
less than two years apart.
We moved, my wife and I,
last year, left the density.
The children are in the city.
I do a little consulting
from the house and make
poems in the shack behind.
A good number of the poems are about her,
us, sometimes the five of us.
God doesn't tap my shoulder.
The place has nothing in it,
nothing: stone floor,
cracked;
raw walls;
eaten away foot
wide plank ledge-my desk. I stand.
Moving newspaper soft black copy pencils
without erasers from my old days
I compose, revive in fine point fountain pen
green, harvest,
ditch, reluctantly, overripe
darlings, dreaming
out the unwashed shallow window
that won't open.
Around,
the place mustn't be much
more than six feet. There
we converse in her element. There I feel nothing
comes between us.
Nothing.