When we turn the earth
in our yard for garden,
the last tenant’s burials
emerge as bones.
Let us say some words
for every creature that breathed
its last, for the rabbits, birds,
and squirrels, for the dog
and the stray cat that came
for mice and rest,
when the dog was gone
and the baby possum
that once stewed in the scent
of dirt and sleep, the insects cometh,
and the moles that shrugged off
the little life left in them,
removed from their steely traps.
My grandmother refused to be buried
in the Catholic cemetery
because of a gopher problem
and laid her money down
for a municipal plot. Digging up
bones picked clean, I understand.
Last spring, arctic air swept
the plains and a foot of snow fell
after the robins had arrived,
the worms shrinking
below the refrozen soil.
My husband found a robin
lying in the snow and thought
he felt the heart still beating,
the bird’s dark eye frozen open.
He carried the robin inside,
lay its body in a shoebox
under a scrap of wool,
as if a bed tucked into.
