The Grasses Unload Their Grief

Our feet didn’t touch the ground all year,
But we marched: gray smoke,
One leg following the other,
Curved like scythes,
Turning with the same measure
Of blades of grass that ripple
In a field.

The three of us: our skin removed,
Laid away like winter covers from a bed.
Underneath wasn’t flesh, bone or blood,
Though all our organs kept.

I could see right into my mother and father.
In each of their mists
A chain
Floating heavy, and coiled.
Then, shame or no shame,
I knew I looked the same
Only smaller.

The chain in place of
A son, a brother.

By the time we slipped
Back into our bodies,
The chain had shrunk
Like an umbilical cord.

Instead of words, my mother uttered syllables
That fit onto silver teaspoons
Whose glossy oval backs flew into the sky
And became a language.

Instead of words, my father blew cinders,
Leaving soot everywhere

As I looked from below
The jut of
Never.