Bodega | Digging

There is a word for the rabbit

that darts from the clover to the edge of the field,

it’s the same word your great grandfather

whispered to himself when the last bagpipe trill

buried his youngest son. There is a world of loss

that is always at the edge of the field. It is a superstitious

altar, the homes, the doors, the small lock boxes against the thieves,

the rainy day funds.

The lawn lumps up with coffee cans. When my grandfather’s mind

went left, he buried them. Thousands of dollars, saved from pensions,

the checks we have forgotten for ourselves. He buried them and drank

milky discount tea for meals, watched as the grass formed over the mounds.

When at Christmas he would open a can of cashews, he told me that his greatest joy

was a bit of sweetness every winter, a fifty-cent book whose ending he had verified for happiness,

the grief he buried to never talk about, and the dollar bills he left to winter

when his own body would find its ground.

Digging