Moonlight falls between the trees

Its white railings surround

the dead, who stand out of our ken.

A voice spoke her name and woke her.

The moon is the breast of a young woman

bending down behind a tall fir.

She took the bag of bones and flew

off into the night.

It was a string bag. A green string bag.

She flew the way an eagle flies,

carrying a dangling animal.

They were the bones from a man, but not

boiled white bones.

It was prudent to gather them up.

The railings of moonlight

drop across grass.

The dead press against them, a forest

of shadows uphill from the house,

crossing creek beds and mountain ranges.

A young woman’s breast

without the darkened nipple and aureole

of a mother. A breast still close

to the curve of chest, not pulled

by feeding. A hunting breast,

out with her owls.

She was taking the bones

into the deepest dark of the forest

and leaving them someplace lost.

That man was going to be all gone.

She was doing what needed to be done.