LAMP

Out over the azalea and cherry tree
into the front window of the yellow cape across Lockwood Street
the lamp shines every night,
aglow amid life’s happenings in the neighborhood.

It is a golden lamp with a white stained-glass shade,
and at dusk it bursts from the darkness of the home,
casting shadows into corners and blazing the blackness,
a reminder of days past.

Now, a time later, the family that once shone light and love
into the home has passed into all things; the home is silent.
No children laughing, no meals at the table;
just a gathering of dust.

There is a plastic chair on the stoop; no one sits anymore,
no one chats under the overhang on the patio.
Tomato stakes hang on to the remnants of last year’s yield.
Everything is surrounded by the movement of life.

Everything is left, but nothing is touched; nothing is needed today,
except for the lamp, the overseer of all gives light to the crooked awning
and the untilled garden where the luminosity reaches,
awakening at the end of every day, the spotlight of the life that was.