I’ll sit here in this parking space for a spell,
just about where my grandfather would sit
resting in his rocker, me a few feet over
on the couch, us watching something on TV
when a living room, the house still sat here.
I know this is right since 10th Street is still
right along there, just off what was his porch,
and there would have been a steel glider, gate,
the mailbox I saved, the two trees he planted,
grown large, cut and gone. The man parking
in the spot to my left doesn’t know he’s part
way in the kitchen, the lady over there in his
bed room. That empty spot is the back porch.
That line of spots the back yard. A little patch
of pawpaw trees once stood there. When this
asphalt grows old and neglected, cracks like
all lots do eventually, what will sprout there?
–Larry D. Thacker
Larry D. Thacker’s poetry can be found in more than a hundred publications, including The Still Journal, Poetry South, Mad River Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Ghost City Press. Visit his website at: www.larrydthacker.com
Copyright 2017, Larry D. Thacker