When sunlight beckons on a Tuesday
with a few hours to myself
outside the back door, tansy
leaves like ferns emerging
I move maple logs devoid of bark
creating a small Stonehenge
near the bird feeder and birdbath.
Everything reminds me of him
from the empty grey chairs,
to red paint chips among the mint
to pale green sedum in a broken clay pot
to old bricks he collected
to the base of a terrarium that
leaked when I first met him,
built years before, during
his first and unhappy marriage.
When sunlight beckons on a Tuesday
I remember when we had strawberries,
asparagus, raised garden beds and
a rotting back porch, leftover cats,
and only one son, his golden curls
above overalls and red sneakers,
content with a plastic pipe
and toy lawnmower, pretending
to fix things while smoking
just like his father on Saturdays.
In moving the old terrarium, wooden
and brass heavy, the dirt underneath
reveals a redbacked salamander,
scooped up and saved in goatskin gloves
given to me by my mother to protect
my hands, which I barely wore
until today, a thin edge of purple on grey.
Blinded as I entered the house from sun
my eyes taking longer to adjust,
my hands as if accepting Holy Communion
the salamander squirms towards certain doom,
I panic, grabbing a cheap vase that once
held a Spring bouquet the March my father died.
Back outside to trowel moist dark dirt
and worms, as my mind fumbles and sifts
through old memories regarding what
salamanders need to survive in
temporary captivity, quite certain
he once would have remembered even if
no sunlight beckoned on a Tuesday.