Reunion
By Deidre Price
Twenty years brought me back
from Vegas to Columbus,
the place I knew best
before the best became better
when I became we,
and then we two to we three.
The history of a place
breathes its memories into us,
air wending itself into each space,
each wandering crack
in our hearts and our head.
The history of a place
pulls our strings taut
until every vocal chord
seeks to say the words
we would not on our own.
I found him lying where I left him,
steady and six feet beneath my feet,
below a tower of a tree among a sea
of stone tablets punctuating the Georgia
ground
like a thousand gray underscores.
Flowers celebrated my father
as I spoke to my wife,
my we,
in a symphony of bright petals,
each vase overflowing with
harmonies.
I’d never heard the sound of red
or seen lilac lullabies ushering in
such sleep.
Here, every yellow petal sang out
moonbeams
while my father’s blues bellowed behind
these songs as long as leaves.
And then a fawn from seeming nowhere
leapt into this colorful song
jumping over headstones
as if to add fermatas.
In the unlikeliest of places—
and thank God for it—
life lingers.
