“Burial”

Upon hearing the rain tap my window this morning I didn’t say to myself
There is the sound of restlessness
Nor there is the dew being washed from the wild rose
Nor there is the grass emerald in life
For all living vines and flora deepen their color after the rains,
Nor there is the oak’s trunk stained a dark grey
Nor there is the sky rent open, torn like a silk slip
Nor there are green strawberries refusing to blush
Nor there are the robin’s eggs in the fallen nest—

I weep not because we are to be separated by this wet dirt
Nor because the flowers will wilt and die
Nor because you braided lessons in my hair like laurels, a crown shining into the future
from which I shall pluck my destiny
Nor because your words linger like stars in the early morning
Nor because the world seems blank and empty, a vase filled only with water,
Nor because the cold rain is the only thing I feel as I stare beyond the priest at the woods
on the edge of the cemetery
Nor because the single doe on the edge of those woods, too, is all alone
Love, like water, pools under my heels in the grass—weeping, saturating the swollen earth.