Pines thinly hid them on the forest floor:
huge useless molars, only three or four
upright—a sign remembrance, too, had died.
He climbed the rusted gate and jumped inside.
Thick, unpruned brush could mask but not deny
these double deaths. But leaf-flecked morning sky
gave him the swishing courage to trespass
through goldenrod ablaze in autumn grass
against the ghosts. Black slates, slumped and abraded,
rebuffed demands to be interrogated,
their dates and names erased like blackboard chalk.
What more to see? This: shuffling on his walk
his shoe scuffed whiteness half-concealed in earth,
two years inscribed, the same for death and birth,
with chiseled letters brimmed with gritty moss
beneath two scrolling wings and a small cross
—a simple child’s slab laid without a stand.
He wiped leaves off the tablet with his hand,
scrubbed moss with his shirtsleeve and spoke the words:
“Ann, gone to play with angels.” Cheerful birds
nearby evoked a girl’s angelic play,
or did they tease him why he played today
with stones where even ghosts refused to stay?
A bell chimed. Late for school, he ran away.
