Dry grass stubble scratches at our ankles.
Gray stones lift their heads as if to say,
“Please, stop here. Are you seeking me?”
And though some names scrape at memory,
they’re not the ones we want.
We walk and search and read, until
my brother waves success.

We stand at their graves. Roses
in a curling frame are etched
around our family name.
The silence of decades looks up at us.

Why did I need to come? To check
that they’re still here? They’re not.
The earth took them, returned them
to soil from which their hands made a life.
This is where the hands of the clock fall off.
Bodies beyond time. Bodies that gave life

to me. And what they gave me
will not last. I’m late in my life, and still
it will not sink in.

That which turns my head, that lights up
my eyes, raises my arms to hold the sky,
that sings these lines in my mind,
will cease in this same silence.