The Eagle took flight

The Eagle took flight above the garage.

The walls had absorbed sixty years of our lives.

Our childhood, middle years and elder years,

Breathing in and out the air, filling the rooms,

The lives and death of brother, father, grandfather, husband, uncle,

held our private sorrow mingling inside molecules in corners,

the peeling wallpaper above the ceiling and beneath the paint.

The dining room table where we gathered through childhood,

adulthood and leaving, then coming back as we aged.

The creaking glider out back, Dad's cellar trains,

the gig grandpa built, the laundry rope that held our clothes,

my wildcat record player blasting John Lennon,

the once freshly shingled exterior, now dirty.

Sixty years of our lives embedded in ceilings and frame.

Later the joy of welcoming our children and their children.

Inside the walls the sounds, the love, the loss

witnessed in silence our voices, our rhythms

like a shock absorber,

our earliest and deepest union, our bond and comfort together,

the quirky jokes we shared between ourselves,

the deeper unspoken bond of comfort between us,

our space through time

until the eagle took flight above the garage.

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9/8/2023