[hours before fireworks
could have delivered
the fatal sonic blast] she
shades terminal shudders
with a suntanned hand,
keeps vigil and disseats
flies with a lopped-off
maple branch.
I move wisps
of dried melon tendrils,
carve an earthly sepulcher
in a barren raised bed.
She lifts the shovel to exalt
soft hollow brown mottled down
with fledgling blue tufts fluttering.
[the man who used to live
here would dispatch mice
with a hammer, bragged
of his butchering skills,
lusted for guns to hunt
something/one]
Underneath neighbors’ radios and wine-cooler clinks,
she finishes the last syllables of the Kaddish.
