Swan Point Cemetery, Providence RI
by Claire Celeste Brassell
I
In New England, we divide time into winter and not-winter.
Your brothers and I wait at windows smudged with hands and hot breath.
Red Radio Flyers rest beside dented walls, damp boots, the rumble and clang of the plow.
During winter that should be not-winter,
a snow-stung Easter Sunday, bare ground dusted white as flesh too long inside a body,
you arrive. Slippery in our palms, eyes still closed as a newborn kitten.
But you cannot mew, cannot turn toward the soft and warm.
You come in the winter that should be not-winter, the cold that shears and strips us bare
as a field that crunches underfoot, stark as an open mouth, an empty bed.
II
When not-winter comes, red Radio Flyers circle long blocks
of damp willows, wet grass, overturned earth.
Wheels squeak under weak sun. Unseen animals shake branches,
claw against bark, cool in the shadow of moss and stone.
Your brothers wander above you, weaving between carnations and carved words.
When the stillness is too still, I look up to see a coyote circling my living sons.
Shoulder blades rotating sharp and easy as water, loping closer. Debating.
Soon it will be winter again and she and I both know cemeteries are for the living.
When I stand, she stops. Watches me. Turns from my sons.
There are other, easier lives among the lichens and marble to feed her own.
III
We see the coyote twice more before winter falls.
She is a motion against a stone wall.
A whisper in the birch grove bordering the chapel.
She does not look at me again.
And I think of her sometimes when the snows come, white against white,
ice crusted puddles pooling by the door, carpets smelling of wet dog,
when the ground freezes a tiny body, eyes still closed.
When I long to push the dead back inside me, to the warmth.
I wonder if the coyote is safe in her hidden den, spine curled, nose tucked against fur,
if she has taken what is not hers to take.
In winter and not-winter, she and I both know the hunger of the living,
the drive to fill what is empty.