POSTMORTEM GEORGIC

5 2 Y P O S T M O R T E M G E O R G I C J A M E S R I C H A R D S O N If I die in June, the true end of our year, exchange the storms for screens and summon the technician to check the coolant pressure in the central air before the dog days when the black drive wavers and no bright metal can be touched, and then swap out the filters, and now that our little grove of maple, oak and hickory has shed into the gutters (O deeper than you imagine) petals and dust and unfelt leaves, flush them out lest thunderheads that build in the searing afternoon, toppling, leave them weeping around you. Yes, if I die in summer you will be hard-pressed to keep the shrubs clipped back and the grass down till the heat browns it, and to counteract metastases of chickweed, black medic and poison ivy. Circle the house now with broad bands of pyrethrins to dam the streams of carpenter ants, and if they keep coming seek out their nests in stumps and the garden’s railroad ties, and kill them, if you have the heart (as I might not) to battle life, having so little left of your own. Trundle the recycling to the curb infallibly on alternate Mondays, or if in weekless summer you forget what day it is, do it any day and wait till it is taken as all things are. Repair the small appliances that faltered while you were drowned with work and could not bother, or let them go, since little these days is worth repairing, and service the car for journeys you have been putting o√ 5 3 R that you cannot put o√ longer, now the world grows old, or do not, and tell the world it must come to you. But after all, I would never die in summer. Say to our children as usual his mind has wandered, only this time so far he has not come perfectly back, and then think the click, a little too long, of setting your glass on the endtable in the twilit air you cannot tell from your skin, is the click of me also invisibly near you setting mine down. If I die in autumn, exchange the screens for storms, and set traps baited with nut butters along the perimeter of the basement and foam-caulk all exterior cracks and seams to foil the mice, checking also the chimney cap and the screening of the vents to keep out flying squirrels, native to these woods, though many do not believe in them with their huge black eyes all pupil, and their rustling above us, and summon the servicer of the big hollow furnaces, for when the cold like empty boxcars rumbles in and the heat is creaking in the aluminum ducts you will be cold, coldbones, without me, listening awake to, what is it, the wind, mysterious disk accesses, creatures flowing in the walls? Turn the clocks back, slide fresh batteries into smoke detectors, and reset the timed lights, for the days grow shorter and you will be driving home in earlier and earlier sunset and the day will hurt you with its unexpected darknesses, like the young husband who could not speak his mind, and now, before the year begins in earnest, weed out your files, discarding a third of all you have as the trees will, since leaves, also made for a single year, grow shabby and slow, and heavy snows would collect in them cracking limbs o√ and splitting even the thick trunk, and travel light, for all you carry you will carry alone. And when all the leaves are down, even the reluctant oaks, blow them into the woods, or call someone to blow them, 5 4 R I C H A R D S O N Y and then, only then, scoop out the gutters once again, lest they clog and freeze, sagging with ice-mass, or call someone to do it. Then drain the mower and park it, or sell it since you will not...