Red Carnations
Your dad died three years ago.
You were 61. Today
your brother left red carnations,
his favorite, by his name.
Beside your dad’s place,
a stranger’s sinking grave,
the name angled like
a board game played
on a tipped table. Deer
watch us, often eat the flowers.
We don’t scare them.
They sneak back
after we drive away.
In the morning,
work. The slow moving forward,
step by step, to death.
Kenneth Pobo had a book out in 2015 called Bend of Quiet from Blue Light Press. His work has appeared in: Orbis, The Fiddlehead, Indiana Review, Amsterdam Review, and elsewhere