by Sarah Carey
including the living, a solarium, the dining,
absent a table. The remodeled shower for easy access
had a window overlooking bushes thick
with raspberries my sister and I picked,
ate right there in the yard soon after the break-up,
found nothing like sweet Florida’s.
I freeze-frame the glacial way he’d rise
from his recliner, brace against his walker to greet me—
when, in his day, he’d crave a ticket anyplace
adventure called—cathedrals, streets of cobblestone
in Florence, in Munich, whole itineraries
to trouble the ground his ancestors walked
imagine their ingress, egress,
until the diabetes and a beat-up body wore him down.
When my nieces ask about their late
grandfather, I say it’s a shame
they’ll never know him healthy, always with a plan,
how he would say, my name is John, what's yours,
to any handyman, extend his hand.
How when he taught, you’d never see him
in a shirt without a pen clipped to his pocket,
or outside without a proper hat, being fair
and mostly bald. He only wanted Florida again,
just one last time, before he died.
I see him near the portico, his overflowing
bookcase, coats racked trench to rain.
Hear background chimes mark time.
Hear Father translate nostalgia
from Greek roots: return home and pain.
Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing
program. Her poems have appeared recently in Gulf Coast, Five Points, Sugar
House Review, Florida Review, Redivider, River Heron Review, Split Rock
Review, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. Her book reviews have appeared
recently in Salamander, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and the Los Angeles Review.
Sarah's poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Orison
Anthology. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including
Accommodations (2019), winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, and The
Heart Contracts (2016, Finishing Line Press.) Her debut full-length
collection, The Grief Committee Minutes, is forthcoming from Saint Julian
Press in September 2024. Visit her at SarahKCarey.com, on Instagram
@skcarey1, Bluesky @saycarey1.bsky.social, or Twitter/X @SayCarey1.
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