Saskia Hamilton

LISTEN

She undertook to collect his bones and carry them in such a way

that they might become reanimated. Discussions with the children

about the first doctor and the last,

the vitamins and alternative medicines, about the one

visit when he came and someone opened the cellar door

and someone else complained that he’d cleaned everything

and when she crouched down to pick them up again she

could not hold them in her arms, so she fetched a box

made from wood he had split last winter, or wanted

to split but didn’t, it doesn’t matter, the idea was to carry them

in such a way that they might be reanimated but who

could tell her if she had made a mistake. Were the Christ

collected and enchanted back, or Eurydice following, or the man’s

wife and children reassembling in the first tale told by the one traveling

from Greenland, perhaps at last you would know.

The centipede distracts you. You sink,

the insects dig down, the mole digs forward.