Birthday Poem for Dad by Melissa Reeser

I’d like nothing
better than to send you
nothing.
	I mean, the absence
			of things
to do, calls to make, stuff to buy.

I’d love to send you
the burned-down barn we didn’t see,
how the wind might sound there,
happy in the recent grass that grows
unheeded, the look of light
unblocked by boards and free
to spill down through tall trees
and high clouds.
		I’d send you
no waves, from time
spent drifting on our boards
in the glassy quiet, the lap-lap of water
past the breakers.
		The nothing
between stars
that is the gift
of constellation.

Melissa Reeser