Scattering the Ashes
Late, late at night,
he searches for her birth certificate,
for their marriage license, for snapshots
of the two of them, together.
Morning begins with daylight
splayed across the surface of the frozen
pond behind their house.
It is late February 2022
and still this winter threatens.
Oak leaves, brown and sere, hang
from limbs like cast-off face masks;
spiny pathogens, disguised as burrs,
lie in wait to catch and cling.
Outside, he knows her garden
is mid-winter hard: he hears the pond
ice crack and buckle in the cold.
But in early April,
when the pond is iceless
and algae-free and the mallards
arrive in pairs, he’ll keep his
promise to her.

Falling Rock Zone

Near the warning sign,
the monumental plate, set in stone,
is cracked. To the right, far
below the guardrail,
a river flows.
Bent, corroded, calling
attention to the rock face, the sign
has always been there.
Yet in warm summer sunlight
or when the mountainside is barren
and frozen still, the road is wide;
there is no danger.
It is on rain-soaked
evenings that the road grows
narrow, the cracked plate beside
the twisted sign
ominous.
Ahead, he knows
the grey rocks wait, the ground
beneath them softening
in the rain,
and alone,
between rock face and guardrail,
he drives faster, darkness falling
silent as stone.

When It Fell
Year after year beside
our hiking trail it grew, its
branches filling with bright green
leaves in May, turning brown and falling
in October, cushioning the path
beneath our feet.
Long before its bark
thickened and the furrows
deepened into thin red stripes,
we carved our initials in its soft
grey wood to celebrate
our love.
Later, when the children
began to run, we tacked a picture
of a runner in silhouette beneath
a thin black arrow on its thick
brown trunk.
Today, we watched
that big oak fall across the trail
like a perfect seedling that didn’t take:
its leaves, its branches, its limbs
and trunk still intact.
And when it fell, something fell
within us, as if we too had been
uprooted from the earth.

Bob Meszaros taught English at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut, for thirty-two years. He retired from high school teaching in June of 1999. During the 70s and 80s his poems appeared in a number of literary journals such as En Passant and Voices International. In the year 2000 he began teaching part time at Quinnipiac University, and he once again began to submit his work for publication. His poems have appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Tar River Poetry, Concho River Review, The Courtship of the Winds, The Hungry Chimera, Naugatuck River Review, The Courtship of the Winds and other literary journals. He has fully retired from teaching and is now preoccupied with his poetry and his three grandchildren.