Before we’d even started she’d begun
to clear, the whitefish salad bought special
for those among us still unschmeared.
So good to see you, and so good you’ll come again,
and so wonderful to think of you next year.
When will I see you? I’ll be there. I’ll be here.
Her holiday the selling season, the store she’d had long dead.
The stories anchored her and us to her.
October is Thanksgiving is the New Year.
O to be the littlest generation,
squirreling hard pretzels into the attic window
of the flower room, hiding in a book.
We’d play hide-and-seek, knew the spots
for the pleasure of being sought and found.
O I will leave no house to my generation.
O there are houses where once there wasn’t
even an emptiness, a lot undivided, a glut
of four-leaf clovers, weird that close to the sea.
And her assets are divided, equal as ashes,
that is, together in the plot,
which ends here. It’s the end of an era.
So the ones who will remember will remember
death on TV, the noiseless way screens
make everything present, Sunday, morning.
A parliament of witches cycles past,
in real-life surprise, all ready in their capes,
hats pointed, undeterred by rain.
Of course it’s October. The houses
are decorated to death, the gravest
jolly with bones, the skeleton mannequins.
We did holidays under the money tree.
When the last to come would be the first to leave
and the first to lie here, under these leaves.
Thirty-six righteous walk among us.
O, she’d say, I’m doing just fine, I’m dead.
That’s all right. I’m so happy we’re here.
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