And you tethered me home

A Poem for Jennifer, after Hiromi Ito

My father died.
I opened the door and there you stood

tall and slender as light.
Gift in your hands: muffins you baked.

Your eyes between green and blue and gray.
Like the sea. Like winter sky.

You knew grief’s hunger, rooting deep.
You knew—

    That winter I moved away,

day after day of snow and black ice.
Schools closed. Roads closed—

    sadness rooted deep.

And you mailed a box of persimmons,
three rows of orange suns. I cradled

each one, set them in a wide glass bowl.
Their light filled the kitchen.

Their light filled my throat, stomach.
I mean to say, You saved my life.

I wanted to leave this Earth: too long
too cold. Darkness shaded my eyes.

And you tethered me home.
I mean to say twice -

Andrea Scarpino