y memories of uncle could fit in a teacup.
The black stirrings, broken leaves washed in dark water.
Before they carried his coffin over the threshold,
we struggled to find words to wreathe around him;
unmarried, childless, his dark eyes like anvils.
Even the dogs would not come near.

The dirt we threw down was too light to hold him.
The village whispered, bolting its doors.
Something threaded the silent streets under twilight’s thickening bruise,
a flash in a window, soft breath in the dark.
Soon, the blood pooled beneath sleeping children
and torn bodies of animals in dark barns.

We went in daylight to my uncle’s stone and dug,
the soil still loose and rootless above.  In the last moments,
I turned my eyes away – grandfather was cutting.  Grandmother prayed.
We burned the heart into a flower of dust,
mixed the ash with water from the font, passed the cup.
He was ours, after all.  We must save our own.