What I Thought I Knew
Ken Autrey

What I Thought I Knew

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.

Ken Autrey

is the author of three chapbooks: Pilgrims (Main Street Rag), Rope Lesson (Longleaf Press), and The Wake of the Year (Solomon and George). A resident of Auburn, Alabama, he has contributed poetry to Chattahoochee Review, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, and other journals and anthologies.