chalk it up to the hole in the yard

there was a hole in the yard that dad sometimes sat in when it rained hoping that the senseless accumulation would raise his body with the tide of the river

though it never did

and he’d climb the same aluminum ladder his dad did and do what the rain was incapable of

he was quieter on those nights sometimes studying the absence from the window after his failure while mom scraped uneaten leftovers into a trash can that grew with our belts

after our sister passed he filled the hole with objects he’d bought from garage sales over the years

a snow globe that once predicted a winning horse a stained glass car battery used as a defibrillator at a church no one worshiped at an AM radio made from downed power lines a sack of marbles with varnished flies a jar of sand with a piece of yellowing tape that read normandy

were amongst the things he awarded to the irregularity eating our lawn maybe hoping their presence would unburden the clouds and he’d finally take the ladder to the town dump or lend it to our neighbor who didn’t move much from his own broken jacuzzi

it never did rain again after all that and when we called from time to time he’d tell us it still hadn’t

and we didn’t go back much so maybe it didn’t

or maybe it had been raining for years