The Brooklyn Rail

We’re watching bones scuttle. Home scattering heirlooms.
Bones. Filling our spas. Bones cutting the grass. Another.
August. And still the war. Bones spreading the congress of crow’s
beak. Bones shredding the upstairs. The screen door netting.

Bones at the back. Of the coffee shop. Bone broth graves. Of course.
Aspirated by rage and dreams. Just bones in the banker’s box.
These are the bones of bones. Making the harvest. Bone by steady.
Bone. The Terms written. “The girls, sisters whose bones became
lessons,” said so tenderly. Remembered.

All her fond wishes. To all the students. Of bones we’ve become.
If we can say nothing else. Nothing enough to heave. A question.
A membrane on our shoulders. Our life-wide backs. Who will read.
Or bonfire all our longing. In this life. And do we hope after. All
The bells have hushed. Their threnodies. And we are full. Forget
Nothing. Our blare. Of swifts here. This hurricane lifting the bone.

That becoming life. Knows death. At 6 P.M. The day officially dark.

Here come the men of bronze. Men of iron. This canal.
Goes clean. Down the Gulf of Paria. 45 feet underneath.
There, grouper. There, catfish. Haul their hundred-pounded
Lives. Into the company of owls. Young blue herons, gagged,

still in their white frock. Here, brackish water.
Scarlet water. For the great egret’s scare landings.
The tri-coloured heron’s toss. Of white subaltern.
A flash of red Mangrove. Is the ibis blaring its horns.
At sunset. Remembering its black birth. After three years.

Of eating into red. Red until death. Who can claim a victory.
So easily. The Flamingoes’ route. To reddening their years.
You should see them. Nesting April to October. It was April
Two days ago. Now even the calendar arrives taxed. Scarlet.
Lettered by the officers who still think it is 1782. And sisters.
On sidewalks. Only rust the patriots. So fast, lovers sicken.

Why be precise with foresight. Wages. Precious with loss.