Neighbor

There's movement in your empty house;
they're cleaning it to sell,
your life stripped off and blown about
like shingles in a gale.

Your daughter says it's eighteen months
since all your storms have ceased.
They'll fix the house like it was once,
and maybe you'll have peace.

You held your anger like a light,
and like a light it burned
a comfort in the lonely night,
all other comfort spurned.

She says you broke at last and called—
you'd cut us off by then,
ensconced in silence like a wall.
Was that our punishment?

You built that wall up stone by stone,
all stacked and mortared tight.
God bless all those who die alone,
and you alone were right.

No hurricane could bring it down
'til Gabriel should blow
a trumpet seven times around
the walls of Jericho.

But God who saw inside those rooms
where you lived on alone
can make even the rubble bloom
when all our winds have blown.

Waurika Oklahoma Tornado Front-Lit Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=850422