snow picture 

even in august sometimes i'll see 
the ghosts of my snow drawings.
roaming the yard as a kid i would write creatures 
with my footsteps. they have aged.
once soft lines, now ragged in the wind.
they have eyes like catacombs. ribs 
to row a boat. in the living room one ghost
peers in the window while mom & i talk
about death. the aunts whose house we
had to gut. the walls gone so quickly. 
my father walks with the snow animals.
he feels horrible for being the one
to gather & make sense of their belongings. 
trash bag after trash bag. ugly clothes 
& stained mugs. my aunts did not live lives
of things. no designer bags. no gold jewelry. 
batteries burst inside old alarm clocks. 
instead, they gathered pears from the tree 
behind the house. filled a broken cookie jar.
watched re-runs of the phillies. their lives 
had so little to do with what they used to live. 
they, like the snow animals, are more than
their water or their windows. still just like my father
i find myself craving to drive back to that house & find
it all the same as it always was. maybe it would
be covered in snow. icicles from the roof.
the snow animals show my father how to lay down.
we find him in the garage looking for crosses.
looking for prayer cards. looking for rosaries. 
everything, too much. the sun, never strong enough
to take all the creature out of us. my mother 
& i talk about the church of bones. skulls & ribs.
she says something like, "all of those people 
had lives." i think she is trying to say
that in the end we keep our ghosts. the animals
sleep in the kitchen with him. he asks me
if i think he's thrown away too much. 
i tell him "no" even though i am not sure.