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"In the last conversation with my father we talked not of birds" by Laurel Benjamin

In the last conversation with my father we talked not of birds,

not of ribbon ignited at dusk, but the wedge of blue cheese

for his birthday. Maybe I hoped that each word, a pyre lit at dusk,

would smoke-signal our ancestors for help with the conversation.

We talked not of the turned wood sculpture on the marble table

or the painting of blue ladies strumming guitars,

not of stormy grains of fog that inhabited the bay or letters sent

about careers, snail mail voice insistent as a wren's curved

aperture, beak and tail up. This was no spiel. Feet did not sink

into the carpet, carpet did not turn to sodden grass,

did not reveal a bridge in the background, only kitchen lights

where Mom pulled dinner out of the oven.

We came less from a storyline—despite Russian pogroms,

an orchard bloomed—than how he grew past his father's

wallpaper, the Flatbush apartment, Yiddish-Hebrew newspapers,

kosher dishes, how young men didn't linger.

What this all means is, despite everything, that evening I inched

forward not talking of birds with you, knees knobbed against

the coffee table, grasping the little knife, cutting

into the smooth chunky cheese, fire and smoke,

made it an encounter. Shoulders sloped as we chuckled,

talking not of birds—what did we talk about?

I wouldn't know he'd die four days later.

No birds. No ribbon. Only the dusk, where bare tree arms,

brown and wet, stretched for the sky.