Six Suns

SIX SUNS / Len Roberts Thick rain drops hang from the cherry tree's branches and the field sucks in water. Just now, having awakened from my five o'clock nap in front of the fire, my father came to me saying this is the darkness he now lives in, his voice joined to the down-draft wind of the stove, exploding sparks of oak out on to the floor. When he died, his girlfriend told me the story of how he'd seen a huge, black thing sitting on his chest that he'd swung at but missed until he sat straight up in bed and died. Alone in the basement for hours I broke old furniture, pounded the stone walls, howling out his name until I realized it was only the light that made the difference between us. So when he went into the ground I sent six bright suns of yellow roses down with him, small lights that the mole might see through the steel walls, that the earth worm might feel warming his fractional ounce of blood, that the sun itself might go with those delicate petals, turning his sky from bruised to cerulean blue, the dew, warmed, to waves of sunlight. The Missouri Review · 39 ...