My father lives alone in the house since
Mother left. The china cups are still in the cabinet,
figurines on the shelf behind the sofa,
drift wood like an eagle they dragged back
from Maui is still by the fireplace. He placed
their wedding photo on the mantle, pictures of
my sisters and I as married women
with our children.

More paintings and books but the furniture faces
the same direction, the carpet still needs cleaning and the
kitchen sink still stained near the drain.
I ask about the Peach tree that used to reach
onto the porch and hear how it died and
he planted another which is taller and thicker
but bears no fruit. The cherries?
The birds get them

too fast and he doesn’t climb the ladder
anymore, he tells me. Let’s make tea, he says
and—I’ll put on music—Bizet—he whistles
as it soars through the house and
I walk into the hall, turning into my parents’ bedroom
then the den, my youngest sister’s room
with rusty window frames from her steamer
during asthma attacks, then

up the hall to my middle sister’s room, her paintings
still over the bed, piles of father’s papers
spill off the corner table. My bed isn’t
in my room anymore, the space filled with
mattresses lined up against the wall. The curtains
I sewed are torn.

In each room I look for my mother’s face,
my sisters’ soft bodies. In each mirror
I watch the older woman
searching for when she was there and
everything was different.

Canadian born, Rochelle Mass grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, and moved to Israel in 1973 with her husband and two young daughters. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of two previous collections of poetry; her work has appeared in US, Canadian, and Israeli publications. She is a translator and the editor of Kibbutz Trends, a biannual journal of contemporary issues. Her new poetry collection, The Startled Land, is now available from Wind River Press.