In Their Motions

At an intersection of lanes within a cemetery,

a corner quartered, a cardinal quad, a cross, from

above, the one star in the gloaming

bright in its area—Was that a yes? It had been

a day of winking receptivity. I looked up

the word fend to see if its stave and manage

meanings had separate derivations. Haven’t.

Manage, is it, one does in the little city

of a cemetery, to stroll its arbors

completely and return to the gates?

Come to know its mounds and overhang

shag semantics and compare

what cannot be known of shade

and piano stone and serenity in

the rest of Boston. Sat right here with

a feuilleton once, wet and dry in the rain

reading, happy to feel on the page

an every now and then thump of life

and keep the thread of the narrative.

Fend is only short for defend, of course,

whereas I had expected a fennel frond

or a foil or something inner forest feeling.

Who meant it first as doing without others

who might have helped? Jackson, Thomas.

1627, in his Treatise of the Divine Essence

and Attributes: they do not direct their brood

in their motions but leave them to fend

for themselves. Not far in you find

a place from which to view the broken

families, on the knitted moss and natural

gravel beneath the juniper and fir.

I wonder who they were.