GAYLORD BREWER
AFTER STEALING A GERBERA DAISY FROM
THE GRAVESITE OF AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD GIRL BURIED YESTERDAY
I take the easy path
to redemption—
I plant
cucumbers, yellow peppers
early girl
tomatoes and squash.
I weed saplings
from the wildflower bed,
bury the bulb
of a honey dahlia,
replacement for a young
plant inexplicably broken.
It’s hot work, soil
cakes my skin like black salt.
I don’t use gloves
in the garden, not today.
I want my hands dirty.
I’m finished
with cemeteries for now.
Amanda, go peacefully
and dream no more.
This summer we do not
hike with mules across the Spanish
hill country, do not sit
in the hot shade of the Alhambra.
This summer we are not racing
motorcycles nor, certainly not,
picnicking at the sea, bottles
of wine buried as monuments of empire.
This summer the flowers
do not scream, the sun is a lovely
hovering butcher, and clocks and locusts,
these remain strangely still.
Why even first consider it would
come calling for you? The autistic hum
of a ceiling fan, breezes thick
through a screen, why not a whacked-out
summer bird who can’t sleep?
It’s welcome company, a song in the dark
as you squint out at silhouettes of branches.
But its voices begin to disturb you—
grating phrases of the mockingbird,
of course, but also mewing of the catbird,
squawk of a grackle, trill
of a dark-eyed junco, even raucous scream
of a red-shouldered hawk, and they
haven’t lived around here for a long time.
Probably you have all
the notes wrong, but still that voice
seems not one bird but a dozen in succession,
and, as nights go, sounds become words.
Sometimes weepy, sometimes stoic you sit
in moonlight in the doorway
captive audience to your weird buddy’s concert.
Of course it speaks to you, to you alone
on the last night, the night you open
the door gently as a mouse as the shrill
chip of a house finch becomes another call,
a siren never heard till now,
as black wings come down fast to envelop you.
