Near the railway spur
bones still cry for water.
And the ashes?
Who can say what roots they nourish,
what borders they have crossed?
Here the ship never sails,
the shawl cannot cover.
Tell me silence isn’t the loudest voice.
When the open mouth forgets itself,
the straw man drinks his shadow.
And the moon?
Gracing a wanted poster,
an impossible price on its head.
Coal-faced, it shuns the cattle cars
rolling east on tracks of tallow.
Absence. Isn’t that the surest
footprint of a crime?
The song the mockingbird teaches its young?
This rain grazes the skin like rust.
