In Memory

(Karen Enns)

We see them at the table pouring tea

or bending down among the roses.

Their tall shadows pass along the sidewalks of a town,

through the openings in trees, the low hedges.

Sometimes we listen for their voices in the evening,

sometimes in dreams or when we read.

We hear them as a conscience, soft, insistent,

as if air were medium enough for the dead.

After all they never ask us to remember,

but leave their doors unlocked at night

expecting us, a lamp left on.

And we imagine winters without solace,

stars, we imagine loss, repentance, mercy.

Love, we wonder at the old poverty,

the heavy stoop. They only watch us

with the tired, clear eyes of chess players,

who have thought out every move behind them,

every move ahead and lost.

Want less, they say, or nothing.