I realized early they were dying like a wall,
the barn they’d never paint again, bird nest broken
and the beaver dam. Skies honored them
by dimming at the burial. Fields back home
went fallow some exact unit of time, day, week,
millennium after the expensive dirt snapped shut
around them and the local creek resumed.
Wind ranted like no one loved the wind.
I buried my love for home, the hard trail
through the woods, the Manards, French
on their porch waving hello when I burst
out of the woods into the paved rich world of car
and turned to the glinting town. I looked at my shoes.
This isn’t where the handsome come.
Then the Manards were gone and vivid, the path
wiped out by new housing and I retained every turn.
And what was that movie, Italian, long ago
where a woman died in war in such an offhand way
the crowd thought, ‘this means nothing’? The music died
on the sound track. Children ran off chattering to games
and I didn’t cry. That’s one way to take it: real
and common as rock. Another: to multiply hurt
drink after drink in Las Vegas where showgirls I dream
hint in vain for the key to my room.
I hope I’m right when I say sun gives dirt some odor
it can’t find anywhere else in March. A block
from our house, a meadow climbs to a forest
and our dog plays there where my wife and I walk.
Geology says the rock above us will hold
a million more years. We trust that claim
and our dog tearing off like bones are buried
for storage. No shabby reason like song.