The goldenrod nods over the dried peony, asserting the ruthless march of time, but delicately.

I listen to the children on the playground yelling with joy and think: all of them will die, a few of them before their parents.

The house will not give up its secrets, so stop trying. “What about that time?” No. Just stop.

The passing sirens shred your nervous system anew. This is your life now —

your life without your second born.

Perhaps the gods, in their greed, grabbed him, wanting both his anguish and his grace for their lofty club.

“Two contradictory things can be true,” a friend said to me.

On occasion the dog howls back at the firetrucks and ambulances. I never know when or why.

That’s the thing about sudden violent death, too. You may never really know why.

I prefer the idea of jealous gods stealing my son even if it’s capricious or comical to them, like a magpie collecting string. Better that than some theorem about how matter can be converted but never lost — carbon and hydrogen molecules returning to soil and clouds, etc.

Listen, the coffee drips through the machine after I push the button, telling me it’s the start of another day — but it doesn’t tell me if it’s a day I’ll want to inhabit.

Hush, say the elegant, nodding goldenrods. Just take things one sweetened caffeinated cup at a time.

And then what?

And then what?

When the wicked force of grief rips open a chest, the ribs make room for a new kind of breathing, a softer listening. It’s a catastrophe with an upside, the poets say.

The needle I ply goes in and out as if nothing has happened — except now every completed cloth creation puts me in a bind. Do what with this?

A row of felt houses capped by an indigo moon sounds lovely, but nothing can stop the thing from being, ultimately, clutter.

Grief reorients us to stuff. How little any of it seems to matter!

The maple leaves drop first. The birch and ginkgos will follow.

I don’t know where all the sparrows went – I feel lonely without them. At least when the turkey family comes, I get to feel glad. They trot over, all five of them, the chicks nearly as big as the mother now.

There are places in my mind that I cannot go. They’re all in Colorado. Even some random image of the Rockies taps my shoulder and hisses in my ear: he’s gone, he’s gone.

Soon the black walnuts will fall with a percussive fury and for a week to 10 days, we will feel under assault.

That dangerous thudding happens every year, but now so many occurrences will never happen again. Do I, for instance, set a place for him at the Thanksgiving dinner table? An empty plate.

Someone asks, Do you speak to the Ancestors? Do you call out to them?

Does desperate need jinx my chances of an answer? Willpower and sorrow don’t necessarily partner well.

I feel up against it. 

The coffee gets brewed. The children run out of the school building and yell. The yard crews come and they go.

Maybe I’ll put radishes in my salad today.

If I’m lucky, the turkeys will run over to me when I head out to the garage.

But please turn off the music. All of the music. Every note. I cannot take it.