Remembering Pops

Thirty pairs of black socks
Boxers, all plaid
Three brown belts and one black one
Gabardine pants folded flat, seams matching

A line of clip-on ties, blue and green
A dozen short-sleeved dress shirts
Gold cufflinks in a box
A leather wallet with his license and my high school picture

Clothes stacked on the dining room table
There for the taking but no takers
No one wears gabardine pants or clip-on ties
A watch, maybe, like the one I slipped in my pocket

My brother folds his napkin in a tiny triangle
He shifts his weight on the picnic bench
His shoes jangling the animal traps
Dad hated cats, remember? they killed the birds

Water flutters from the sprinkler
Sinking the sunken spots more
Had he thought to bury hatchets under buried bodies
Neither the birds nor us would have ever known

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Written in response to the Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge: Write a poem using “bury hatchets under buried bodies.”

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash