My father has flown his orange Cessna to visit me.
The air’s bright with bees.
Garden roses bloom in red and pink ecstasy,
barbarous bees riot among them, singing.
We walk the trail to the mausoleum among tall cedar
and scrubby barked Douglas fir, that connect
heaven and earth. You can almost hear them breathing.
Thick underbrush of bracken, ripe thimbleberry.
Nested among them, a family’s stone sepulcher
fashioned like a dinner table.
Six chairs, one for each member.
Fierce shadows. Our voices quiet here.
At the Inn my father orders whiskey over ice.
He does most of the talking.
Looks out the windows to the West.
He’s keeping track of time, weather and wind.
The gravel landing strip at Roche Harbor is short.
No lights. Trees a hundred feet tall at both ends.
I too watch the sun as it moves overhead.
Watch my mother, her pleasure to be here
with me and my father.
See the bees outside, giddy in the honeyed light.
Dad is telling another story. My father is a liar.
He has a secret life. I don’t believe him,
but I listen attentively. It’s what I do.
The sun is slipping, the sky luminous.
They must hurry now.
I say a silent prayer. See the plane lift—
the tops of the firs flutter like ferns.
–
Sigrun Susan Lane is a Seattle poet. She has published three chapbooks: Little Bones and Salt from Goldfish Press; Salt won the Josephine Miles award for excellence in poetry from PEN Oakland in 2020. The third, Drive, was published by Finishing Line Press. She was selected as a Jack Straw Writer for 2025.