While he sits shiva for his father

I bring to him a bag of tomatoes.

In all black he looks like his own shadow.

With a beard coming in, just like his father.

Because it is easy to become ensnared

in words like always and never and now

and since it is impossible to understand how the light, the chlorophyll, the hiss and spit, the thunder, the stoic march, the magic, the hunger, the sugar water, the fire, the Otis Redding, the thrust and the spunk, the stardust, the happy-birthday-to-you, the fury, the shiver feeling of finally fording the river

maybe, the steady churn, the dad, the tick tick tick tick tick tick leaves the body.  Just goes and is gone.  Full stop. 

we sit outside in bare feet, saying

nothing.  He shakes salt into a halved

tomato, and digs his teeth into the heart

of it, the red and juicy meat and seeds of misery.

Stephanie McConnell is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Ponder Review, The Worcester Review, The Paterson Literary Review, BarBar, The Dewdrop, the Under Review, and River Heron Review.  She now lives in New England, but still only writes about Pennsylvania.