When the Time Comes

Every night, I trowel

a handful of soil

on the grave and still

it will not fill.

Tell me why

the texts on grief

suggest sequence

instead of repetition.

Close the casket,

drape the mirrors,

let the mourning song

cease. The clocks

already punished

into silence, the stilled

heart keeping

its peace.

Whoever washes the bodies

now shrouded, God

absolves of forty sins.

When the time comes,

we must not look,

we must not

look away.Grief

is no train we embark,

weary passengers,

conductors barking

all aboard or next stop.

Unless the train-cars

are shrouded in black,

edging forward along

wire-thin rails, an acrobat’s

balancing act.

Unless the train pass

is smudged or blank,

the return uncertain.

The shouted town names

familiar but indistinct, so distant

you can’t be sure whether

to disembark or not.

Unless your luggage shifts

each time in shape and size,

so that today you board

with ease and grace

but tomorrow you’ll stumble

up steps, bumping fellow travelers

on your aisle-long shuffle to stuff

your bag into a storage space.

Unless the signposts at each stop

form a Möbius strip. Unless

some days you lose your grip.

Unless scenery repeats and repeats

but with a boulder misplaced, a cairn

missing stones. Unless you travel alone.

Your effort to detrain seems

strangely routine, as you heave

your luggage once more from a bin, wondering

how—unassisted—you brought it aboard.

Unless you step from the train

again and again. Unless no one’s around

when the lock breaks

and you find, inside, rocks

that crack at the slightest touch

into impossible geometries.

Unless the ride goes on

and on until even the conductor

can no longer say which way

is north or south, west or east.