Like Father’s unfinished life, the half-dressed
donated stone stands in the farm’s front yard
true as an oak. A traveling mason settles
for pasta and peas at the family cemetery.
The youngest daughter whispers Father’s name
in his hairy ear like a sad girlhood secret,
her tears pooling like stars
in his chip-pitted cheek.
Later, she studies his loose hold on the chisel,
the mallet, the reverberating skin
of the gray granite as the rock sings,
its voice carving into transient time
allowing light to enter as to a furrowed field,
down to earth’s bones or birth.
When she asks, he holds her hands to the chisel
as it surrenders to the hammer’s final blows.
For hours after the work ends,
she feels the fury resounding in her fingers
like the wind-rattled breath of eternal ancestry
or the gallop of her own heart.