Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati

Brown-gold with bronze water, broken in blossom,
they shake as you shine over swans, your wedged bodies
pushing the sky towards the monumented island
where long generations of geese flew before you.

Long generations of geese flew before you,
sang out, and melted over the graves.
Won’t long cries of feathers pile a moment
close on another?  Isn’t there one name?

Close on another, isn’t there one name?
Mourning I ask you, oh, mourning I ask you;
so went the questions the geese did not answer;
is this voice a music you mourn with, each time;

Is this voice a music you mourn with, each time?
When questions had asked me, I  moved in their bodies
to follow the light on the movement of swans,
to follow the movements of light on the swans.

First collected in Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003, second edition with CD, 2008).