On morning walks, I’d see my nonagenarian
neighbor on a small stool filling bird feeders with Nyjer

or sunflower seed. She’d smile but not speak,
blue veins and bony rake on the back of her hand

clutching sweater to throat. Now she’s died
and the white farmhouse, dark on the horizon,

mothers its emptiness and dust. Apple trees
in the yard pretend at black-sticked sleep.

Dirty tubes of air, the birdfeeders sway in the wind,
and a stone bird bath, cold and grave, stands alone.

The hood of her Honda peeks out the garage window
like a trapped cat hungry to suss out songbirds

inhaled by bushes and shrubs skirting the foundation.
A basketball pole’s bare hoop bends over the driveway,

cracked and black, and a low oak limb creaks
below scarred bark from a chain swing’s bite. It speaks

of jeans with grass-stained knees, buffalo plaid coats,
sons grown and gone. But it’s the windows, mostly.

The way daylight uses their glass to reflect. The way
pulled shades look like closed eyelids that have overslept.