Again, Dragging a Chair in Front of the Fireplace,

I begin bringing back the dead.

No loose ends. Not even a church,

or a steeple. Only the hairs

of my son’s blonde beard nubbly as en grisaille

graphite on newsprint coming further into focus

at four in the afternoon as the winter day fades

and his young beard invades.

My hands open, welcoming or deflecting–

open fans as kindling catches and crackles.

With the smoke perusing the flue

pale and gray, it is not impossible to remember.

Once, catch of dull blade

vibrated from his chin. I could feel

the drag. Each time after, chose a new razor sharp

along the guard, kept seeing Wyeth’s Barn Nap–

his friend supine in an old dory surrounded by hay,

blonde beard with gray, each hair stroked in watercolor,

never offered for sale, an honor to impending death,

a mythical Viking burial.

I start to feel I might touch him again,

forever, as all those mornings rise up before me:

of course, the whoosh and thump of the oxygen,

his clackety body stiffening in seizure, his rictus grin,

both of us so alive in the Ativan alarm,

then each gold hair on this chin quivering as the seizing quit,

so whatever was smooth and delicious as honey

seems possible again.

Tonight the rain, wood smoke. My hands

empty in firelight. Small urn with a stone on the mantel.

Melissa McKinstry hosts quarterly poetry and jazz evenings and curates a community Poet Tree in San Diego. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in many journals including Beloit, Adroit, Narrative, and Best New Poets 2023 and 2025, and was selected for the 2025 New Ohio Review Literary Prize and a 2026 Pushcart Prize. An Adroit Djanikian Scholar and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Millay House Rockland, she currently serves on the Alumni Council for Pacific University’s MFA program and the Board of the Millay House Rockland. MelissaMcKinstry.com.