We drift though the back Fields,
father and daughter, weekend visitors,
strolling where I was raised.
In the shallow folds of the wood,
bones flare up in the sun
like struck match-heads,
picked clean and scattered
across the open meadow.
The child knows we can never
put these pieces back together,
reassemble the young heifer lost
while calving, death within a death.
The girl's eyes announce that we
shall not leave the unburied
littered among brambles and briars,
shadows of the leafless oak grove.
Because sorrow's springs are the same
forever, we gather the fragments
and build a drumlin of bones,
halcyon home to the wind,
or shelter for any wayward bird,
wings beating like a heart
behind a wall of bare ribcage.