There
are torches and blue lights in the woods tonight. And two men. Tall men.
Official men. It is November cold and rain has begun to run down the black
trees that tilted and hissed with the wind, until a stillness flowed through
everything, leaving only those quiet, graveside tears to patter from the
branches.
A
gentle, coffee-mug warm hand passes across a face to close the eyes, one last
time. All this night and the last, the reflections of the shadows of branches
and all the stars of the universe have moved with the moon across those eyes,
hours before, the morning dew had glistened on them like sadness, but no more
now, and never again.
On
a crisp, January night, no longer in anyone’s memory, a child dances in the
snow, her body whirling and stamping and falling, her mother laughing from the
window.
The
world turns
A
young woman lies on a blanket, on a hillside, on a bed of flowers, under the
hot sun, hot blood and mischief in her veins.
More
officials, more lights; white hoods, blue gloves, snatched from their beds to
scratch and bob for twigs, like spring birds in happier months.
The
body of a woman. No life now, all poured into the ground and the grass with no
mother to see and no flowers for a bed, as her heart slowed and stopped and the
blood thickened and cooled in her veins, in the hard, November dark.
