27

They took the bones
In the shawl and tossed in
A handful of feathers
And red earth
The sun bowed into it
The light was a mess among
Bone and dirt and plume
Bounding from surface
To surface, until
It seemed the earth's body
Bled lustre from its skin
As if to give the day
A bright toy
A memory to treat of and
Pass between its hands
Caked with beloved soil
And they said the name then
Of God and of her gone
And bowed heads though it
Was not the custom
But only for awe, as if at some
Incantation of a realer her
Laid down and recalled once more