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Gone: for my stepfather
Antonia Matthew
Not his long coffin carried up the aisle,
not the closing of the green velvet curtain
as the coffin slid away,
not the placing of his plain urn beside
my mother's in the dark earth
but the single bed, empty and neat,
tells me he is gone.
The cream counterpane is smoothed
over the pillow, down the sides of the bed
I used to help my mother make
when it faced the window
and morning sun brightened the white sheets,
two terriers scurrying under our feet.
Now the curtains are half drawn,
the bed faces the door
where one old dog lies waiting.
There are so many places he is not:
the long dining room table
head bent towards us
to catch our conversations;
his old blue chair by the fireplace,
for an after-dinner nap, newspaper
crumpled on his knee;
by the asparagus beds
arguing with the gardener;
in the orchard
speckled apple in hand,
turning to call the dogs off a rabbit
they've startled out of the long grass.
But most of all, there’s his room
where the old dog will not go in
or move away when the door is closed.
Antonia Matthew is a member of the Writers Guild of Bloomington. She has written Antonia’s Home Front, a transatlantic audio theatre coproduction of Political Art, London UK, and the Writers Guild of Bloomington. It premiered on WFHB’s Firehouse Theatre on October 9, 2022. Directed by Richard Fish of WFHB, it won a Gold Award from the Hear Now Festival in 2023. Author of the independently published chapbook Journey, she has been featured on WFIU’s Poets Weave program, and her poems have appeared in Verse Wisconsin, The Ryder, and Nimrod among other publications.