Albert County Breeder

It was years before I could walk back
to that doorway, figuratively hold

the post of your fallen porch
with its thousand green Mason jars

staring out towards the weathered barn.
On each window your dust

held the shapes of the cobwebs. Here
is your father coming out the kicked door.

Inside I’ve seen the hard-packed dirt
on your kitchen floor, ketchup caked

to the spoons, the bucket in the corner,
aka the winter toilet.

Outside we have more in common: bus shelter
for the wait at the end of the lane, broken-looking

crab apples, blue spruce, red pines,
tar shingles on the coop,

and the wild eyes in the animal we brought
to breed with your animal.