PHILIP GROSS

A Distance

A window, and my mother gazing out
into my father’s distance.
Me beside her.
We are very small.

That’s a gift of a kind: it is
an upstairs window
offering a world beyond—
between the grey of slate, the grey of sea

—the kind of gift that if
unwanted can’t be undelivered.
Leave it in the hall, it stands there
like an open door.