After the long wait for his death,
the pouring out of words, then
ten years later, her quiet departure,
and more lines and stanzas honed

for solace, I thought I had little
more to say about those days,
the tying and untying of knots
that mark our lives.

But now, waking each morning
in this house I find, not exactly
ghosts or shadowy echoes
in the halls, nothing so common.

Instead, I see fingerprints
on faucets, corners turned down
in books, old shoe scuffs on floors
where now my slippers whisper.

So, part of aging, this house
tells me, is to find that the need
to reimagine what I thought
I knew never dies out.