She asked me to kill the spider
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
I’m listening to my father and his brother,
both in their eighties, debate their childhood
from adjoining La-Z-Boy recliners.
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
at the end of a bad year. Trees begin
to outnumber houses. Rain turns to snow
as fields hang like paintings.
