Mark how the living, the loving ones gather
like clouds to bury grief in their hands, bowing
their heads in unison to console the weather.
Having waded through the waist-high grass,
they plant beside a clapboard church a coffin
in the earth from which they pray another
whitewashed cross may grow. The saving grace
they sing of never ceases to amaze them.
Sweet cornrows lend their ears. A child grips the hem
of her mother’s dress, a fragrant lupine
tucked behind the plaits of her flaxen hair.
The paddock at the end of grief is farther
than she can travel in a lifetime,
even as the crow flies, plowing
furrows in a sky, however new, beyond repair.
