My Father's Room

She's moved downstairs now,
her reasons solid: it's warmer
in the winter and cooler in the summer,
and they are all still there, upstairs,
in his room, his jeans and dress pants,
his tennis shoes and funeral blacks,
his ties and clips. I ask her if she'd like
me to help her go through the closet,
to decide what to donate, what to keep,
what to just think about for a little while,
but she can't do it, not even now, two years
later. You can get what you want, she says,
go up there any time, the up there a place
she rarely goes now, a place I've been
very few times since his death. Grief
does not accept parameters, nor should it,
so the conversation turns to the loud neighbors,
the yellow climbing rose, the ornamental
peach in his garden, the hours spent planting
and planning a future in the twilight years
of their lives, and I have to leave, the stories
waiting to be told, my ears not wanting to hear,
the cleaning out not as hard as the listening
which I never did much of in all his days,
his big chair still sitting by the window
where he sat many days just looking
at the trees and thinking, perhaps marveling
and mourning at the many aspects of his
long life, so many friends gone, his children
grown with children of their own, his days
filled with wonder and fear, his sailor's heart
never far from home, sitting there alone,
the aroma from the kitchen filling his senses,
the love of his life downstairs laboring over a hot
stove, cooking his favorite meal, her days now
spent cooking for one, eating enough to survive,
no one upstairs to comment on how perfect
the roast is, how tender and sweet the carrots.