Friday, April 4, 2014

Hard to see

Hard to see

Gray sky, gray city, this gray hill where 
now a siren rips through fog, 
some new calamity below. 
Rain juices down my face. Hard to see a path, 
harder not to think of ash, the grave, 
harder not to look over to gray Hayward 
from this gray slope 
on Fairmont Ridge, harder 
not to think of their graves on the next hill (my mother and father)
in that muck across from Kmart, so very far from their 
birth homes, in Hayward where no one knows them, 
where they came to be less alone with each other. 
Will you ever visit our grave? asks she who hates graves 
but overcomes her animus on Christmas with a small tree 
for my father, because she honors him dead more than alive, 
because now he can do no more harm,  because death 
is a big price to pay for forgiveness.