Squint against the sounds
pushing past gnarled branches –
shirts snap on a line,
taunts of children.
Raise your black skirts above the gutter,
claw the hedges with unsteady hands.
Your house is taken over,
mother’s warm coat you dreamed of in the coldest,
walks down the street on another’s back;
the buried seed pearls unearthed,
glow softly on another’s ears.
Breathe deeply the ash of family,
a student reading,
sidecurl twisted around a forefinger.
The never-blue sky is smeared with all your generations,
their soot rained down grit and grey.
Turn away to the graveyard path,
moss-covered back of an old animal,
follow it to wooded dark.
