You, more recently in my life,
never knew him, but let me
show him to you:

Here he is, dark hair shot with
early white, hunching slightly
over the kitchen counter,
chopping onions, carrots,
something, making things,
making food. For me.

There he is—well, his long legs—
sticking out from under
the old Porsche he’s restoring,
and when I ask if he’d like
a sandwich, he says no,
“But a beer would be great.”

He makes his own, though he’s
an equal-opportunity kinda
guy. Any beer will do.

“Hang onto it,” he says.
“I’ll be done here in a bit.”

And I wait to see him slide out
feet first on the roll-y thingie
he uses under cars, the former
Coast Guard mechanic, forever
tinkering,

if not with an engine,
then at the table saw
figuring out how to make
the Arts and Crafts-style
recliner he saw in a catalog,

or lugging home grapes
in autumn, ready for mashing,
for fermenting, for wine to come,
or boiling hops on the kitchen
stove, the aroma filling the
whole house.

My heart still sees him there.

We know that the timeline of grief,
of each mourning for specific beloveds,
does not fit on a graph or chart, certainly
is not linear. And, after all this time,
it is far from fresh, his absence.

But you didn’t get a chance to know him.
You would’ve liked him, I think.

There he is now—kneeling by
the mower in the back yard,
tinkering, checking, raising his
head to find me across the grass,
flashing his wide grin,

as happy to see me
as I am him.

•••

Today is the 40^th anniversary of Cliff Polland’s “valve job,” as he called it, the replacement of his aortic valve, which gave him another 17 years of life.