Daddy,

I’m so sorry to inform you

That, since you left this Earth,

Everything’s come undone, the things you did.

The path that your footfalls carved

Between barn and house

Has become as amorphous as a ghost,

Deaf now to your familiar tread.

The cattle have forgotten your whistle

And have ceased turning their heads

Toward a human voice.

The fetid earth that you harrowed

And plowed and planted and side-toothed

And harvested, cursed and prayed over,

Has degenerated into riotous pasture.

The well that you dug,

The garden that you tended,

The apple trees that you pruned,

The friendships which you forged,

The rooms that you filled,

All gone, all undone.

— Joy Clumsky lives in Lawrence.