It is easily forgotten, year to
 year, exactly where the plot is,
 though the place is entirely familiar—
 a willow tree by a curving roadway
 sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;
 damp grass strewn with flower boxes,
 canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies
 circling in draped black crepe family stones,
 fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored
 nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;
 such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down
 on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair
 brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,
 birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,
 a stream opening at its foot.
 We know the stories that are told,
 by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy
 regarding the precise enactments of their own
 gesturing. And among the women there will be
 a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.
 The morning may be brilliant; the season
 is one of brilliances—sunlight through
 the fountained willow behind us, its splayed
 shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,
 irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.
 It may be that since our walk there is faltering,
 moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,
 bluebells and zebragrass toward that place
 between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way
 is lost, that we have no practiced step there,
 and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.



















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