At My Brother Paul’s Grave
by Shelby Stephenson

It is November now.  I am home on
Paul’s Hill you farmed with Black and Gray and plows 
Whose sweeps did furrow fields for crops again
With more promises at year’s end:  your sows
Did farrow little piglets for good food
You salted down in the box:  consider your
Barbecue started,1958.
Son Andy runs it now to celebrate.
I hear a dog bark in my sleep alone.
Nin’s a resident at Smithfield Manor,
A skilled-nursing facility.  At dawn,
She says she hears you singing low tenor
To songs she sings and plays on uke and harp.
I play my Martin Backpacker, carry
Away the memories to a real place
To keep you alive, your eyes, music, face.
I know the breeze to warm our heads and hearts.
We shape the things your spirit ever starts.

My Father’s Way
by Shelby Stephenson

I thought that you would go on forever,
Just playing checkers and running the fox.
I will not name those dogs again, never,
As if they were twenty birds choired in rocks.

I see them jumping men across the board
And circling pups in a double corner.
You keep mumbling on to yourself, of course,
Cigar, a special Goodies Corona.

It seemed even after the big C racked
Your body, you lay in the rented bed
In the big room of the ranch house you decked
Out with trophies you won while playing “checks.”

I knew mortality was real at Rex,
When you rolled your clear blue eyes toward me.
You looked as if you had been in a wreck.
And you said, “Don’t you know I am dying.”

I am left to wonder how much one may
Recreate until the very person
Might come back to shake the grief Nothing sways
In words until you appear for certain.

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Shelby Stephenson was poet laureate of North Carolina from 2015-18.  His current book is 
Shelby's Lady: The Hog Poem