Dead things

      i.

      This is the season of dead things.

      Bat curled up on its back, frog broken open

      to the meat, a turtle’s pixelated shell.

      And all the frantic honeybees.

      As a child I daily encountered such death

      when the air was close or thundery.

      There was the flipping over,

      the poking things with sticks.

      Look what I found, smeared and bloated.

      Look what’s living in it.

      ii.

      Hawk stood along the path

      as I jogged past. He eyed me sharply

      but didn’t stir. His ankles had these surprising

      little cuffs. When I looked back

      he took off into a blur of coral tail, gray wing.

      He shrieks around the property

      to frighten small creatures into hiding

      and picks them off while they scurry.

      In this way his cry pierces doubly.

      iii.

      She was nearly gone

      by the time I went to see her.

      A nurse was dampening her lips

      with a coral triangle of sponge

      and she was rasping, a little louder

      when I sat next to her and told her I was there

      and loved her though who knows if she knew

      though they say they do. Her skin

      had grown a size too small. Her eyes

      that were ice blue were closed that day;

      because I’d missed my plane

      I missed their final opening.

      She died early the next morning.

      I held my mother’s hand through this

      though we hadn’t spoken in a year.

      I’m next, she said. I will be, too.