Cecilia woloch poems for funerals

How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever

Didn't I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I'd never go back?

And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?

Cecilia woloch poems for funerals and cremation

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow.

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.

So few birds I know by name—
bluejay, cardinal, sparrow, crow,
pigeon and pigeon and pigeon again.
This morning I woke to the thump

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home-
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off

I watch