The Last Catalogue

Even weeks after you went, they came:

Frontgate, Fresh Finds, Hearthsong—the names blurring,

the smiling models piling in your mailbox,

their offerings now completely out of reach.

In city shoes, with smoky sighs,

we carried each bright sheaf back down the drive

to that last house aground in snow

beside a little pond, the runoff from a drain.

Frozen February. Field and sky

sheeted in rolling white, as if it had snowed both ways.

We cut your cable, settled your oil bill—

still the sheaves kept flowing, as if ordered from a catalogue of catalogues.

And what we boxed and bagged

(reporting late but dutifully for duty)

was all you’d chosen across pages, years,

willed together but not willed away—

the harvest to be scattered, now, to aunts and uncles, cheerful junkmen,

the alleged cousin, the lady from the curio shop, the doorstep of Goodwill.

We swaddled coasters, chargers,

urns, decanters, cruets, pitchers, jugs;

a milk-glass hurricane lamp,

a kitchen slate wiped clean of all but “Bourbon Cake”;

décor you’d brave the cobwebs and crawlspaces

and dodgy ladders to bring out, hang high,

ringing the thankless changes of the year.

The scum husband gone, the kids flown off,

the house a rental you refused to leave

yet couldn’t keep—you’d set out, nevertheless,

the lidded egg for Easter jellybeans,

the wreath of twigs, the wicker cornucopia.

We drained the bourbon. We packed your bobble hat,

a red coffee grinder with corroded crank,

a rack of stemware whose occasion never came;

the wooden stool you’d stare into the field from

(after the final move, your credit flinched,

your pack of Trues a day caught up to you,

you had to return the Adirondack chairs);

the poker, shovel, and straw broom beside

your last inoperative fireplace;

the mantel stuff we’d sent for Mother’s Day;

the velvet firescreen with needlepoint peacock on a leafy perch

(mail-ordered, maybe, by your mother’s mother—the alleged cousin grabbed it);

candles, candles, six bags full;

candles jammed in jars, tucked in cabinets for blackouts,

stockpiled for Christmas Future—wine-red, winter-green,

laid out like dynamite in the lowboy drawers,

fluted as Grecian pillars, thick as billyclubs;

nutcracker candlesticks with jaws agape

(you had a style, I said, as if we’d all subscribed);

the wheeled sheep figurine with dingy wool,

mechanical piggybank with leaping dog,

bull bookends, corner-table carousel horse,

ballerina, Pierrot, black pennywhistle.

The catalogues would find you if you would be found.

They deliver themselves toward you, fling their bargains at you—would a birdbath lure you back?

Glossy yet antiquated, they’ll be damned

to hear of any lasting cancellation;

they will retain your name in adamant files;

they will find you where you dream, addresslessly.