Spring Burials, Margot Schilpp

We were waiting for a thaw.

The plots were tiny, the bones small.

We spaded the earth over itself for

hamsters, the parakeets, a cat.

There is nothing left here

of the people who called this home,

nor of the careful plan of the garden.

Another family mows the yard.

Pine needles thatch the ground.

A tiny egg falls from a nest, and against

the years, I find it, carry it around

the yard. I don't yet know

it will never be a bird. Other lessons

happen: training wheels, traffic,

secrets that shouldn't be.

The neighbors' kids grow up

and move away, cars are traded in.

Then, the light from the stars

of those nights arrives here.

Across the ravine between me

and those years are the voices

that called me in to dinner, that shrieked

in the spring air. I hear them

make the sound of my name.

Maybe I shouldn't tell you this.

Maybe by letting you know me,

I diminish myself somehow and become

smaller than my pets' bones buried

in the yard. But if disclosure is damage,

I don't know what else there is.

How else can we connect

in what we earn of these brief

She arranges the flowers in a crystal vase,

sets it on the piano in the living room,

then puts the shears into the kitchen's

narrow junk drawer. She hums

to me across this afternoon's silence.