Cat Dixon
In My Father's House There Are Many Rooms
for the 30-year-old widow with the one-year-old son
Lord, I want to send a card, a letter of condolence
to my acquaintance,
but I don't know what to write. I scratch a few words on paper, then cross them out.
There are no words except yours. You
promised that her husband is going to a home
with you. Lost on the water, he had been spear-fishing.
Lost, he never came back up.
Please make his room a boat with a glass bottom,
and the carpet, water, so clear, so clean that when he looks
down, he sees her and their son. He will need
an anchor made of stars; his view will never change.
I know he will be fine in your house.
But Lord, I worry about her and the baby.
Can you make them a room here, too?
An invisible room surrounding them:
at home, at the memorial, at the burial.
Then, let it expand and spread to cover
them as they wade into their lives.
Let it be made of grace and love.
Let me help construct their room in some way.
Planted in My Backyard
For Trent
My dearest friend planted the seed years ago. The soil was rocky, the thorns of the rosebush threatening, yet he insisted he plant it here—claimed it was the most opportune spot. How could I have known that this tree would grow 12 feet, would overtake the rosebush, would shade my head in the summer—outside reading Mayakowsky— and would prevent the neighbor’s loose branch hanging over my yard from crushing my back porch? I didn’t know. He did. Not like a fortune teller with tricks. Not like a prince with a magic mirror foreseeing my demise, no, like an experienced farmer who plants everywhere during a drought, a famine, with a hope something will take
Cat Dixon is the author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and Our End Has Brought the Spring (Finishing Line Press, 2015). She is the managing editor of The Backwaters Press, a nonprofit press in Omaha. She is the editor of Watching the Perseids: The Backwaters Press Twentieth Anniversary Anthology (BWP, 2017). She teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska.
In My Father's House There Are Many Rooms
for the 30-year-old widow with the one-year-old son
Lord, I want to send a card, a letter of condolence
to my acquaintance,
but I don't know what to write. I scratch a few words on paper, then cross them out.
There are no words except yours. You
promised that her husband is going to a home
with you. Lost on the water, he had been spear-fishing.
Lost, he never came back up.
Please make his room a boat with a glass bottom,
and the carpet, water, so clear, so clean that when he looks
down, he sees her and their son. He will need
an anchor made of stars; his view will never change.
I know he will be fine in your house.
But Lord, I worry about her and the baby.
Can you make them a room here, too?
An invisible room surrounding them:
at home, at the memorial, at the burial.
Then, let it expand and spread to cover
them as they wade into their lives.
Let it be made of grace and love.
Let me help construct their room in some way.
Planted in My Backyard
For Trent
My dearest friend planted the seed years ago. The soil was rocky, the thorns of the rosebush threatening, yet he insisted he plant it here—claimed it was the most opportune spot. How could I have known that this tree would grow 12 feet, would overtake the rosebush, would shade my head in the summer—outside reading Mayakowsky— and would prevent the neighbor’s loose branch hanging over my yard from crushing my back porch? I didn’t know. He did. Not like a fortune teller with tricks. Not like a prince with a magic mirror foreseeing my demise, no, like an experienced farmer who plants everywhere during a drought, a famine, with a hope something will take
Cat Dixon is the author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and Our End Has Brought the Spring (Finishing Line Press, 2015). She is the managing editor of The Backwaters Press, a nonprofit press in Omaha. She is the editor of Watching the Perseids: The Backwaters Press Twentieth Anniversary Anthology (BWP, 2017). She teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska.