What Remains

Is this all that's left?
asks my son, just dropping in.

The inlaid wooden chest
my father made with love
when they were first married
served in four houses
before I brought it down South
like a coffin to rest here.

For years his tools stalled
like new in their boxes,
until one day I found him
planing a piece of wood,
and I gathered up the curly shavings
and held them to my nose
in the shed the new people have taken away,
but not the smell he said was cherry
or the scar on my palm,
when he let me use the chisel.

I open the chest,
in which she stored the linen and towels
she ironed with love,
and I catch a faint trace of naphthalene,
enough for a flickering memory rush.

Is this all that's left?

Yes, everything else went into care,
except for her two girls on a beach
from their last front room,
gathering dust in the garage,
and his watch, which is broken.
Oh, and there's their carriage clock
he fiddled with,
and got on her nerves,

also beyond repair.

.