ofrenda

She assembles the shrine
on her back porch-
sugar skulls, marigolds,
votives, photographs
a bowl of tomatoes, coffee beans,
his Fitzgerald translation of the Rubaiyat.
There is a slender stack of letters
mostly from London and the Prado
postcard book filled with Goyas and da Riberas.
Finally she lays down the calf-skin gloves
that still remember the shape of his hands,
still curve as if they long to hold her.

Winter waits now beyond the fat round moon,
whispers through leaves that haven’t fallen.
Seven autumns have come and gone-
still she waits for the promised release.
The gifts of time and forgetting
slip through her fingers once more
with every orange petal she drops,
a pathway laid from the altar
to call his spirit home,
down the steps and across the yard.
Where to stop? Where to stop?