There comes the disbelief and the day when a daughter comes to tell the matter
And she knows you can't help She knows there's no way to convince that afternoon to think about it....
No way to stop the fire in the leaves of the driest April in twenty years as it blackens the acres and blurs the eyes to all but its own emergency
Before it the hay of last year's weeds and all those buds that hope conceives
the flight of all that lives...
The plight before... ...The fire-line...
forces every hand to the pure product of heat and light-- then to ash and not to ask "This once was living?"
A senior class wrote their friend good-byes ...could not bring herself to... ...bring herself there....
She had to bring the mourning home to make alive to raise the sun--
"He slammed the medicine chest And saw.... walked through the kitchen opened the frig for the zillionth time... Then walked a mile in the woods behind his house."
Warm for April short-sleeve warm
"...And I keep thinking how the sun must've felt on his face and arms He must've been swinging the jug and-- WHAT WAS HE THINKING?
They found the empty amber a hundred yards behind....
I keep seein' 'im put the handful to 'is mouth... ...Then the jug... He must've had to swallow hard They say you could tell ...where he stumbled... ...by the leaves... ...found 'im on 'is side with the jug ...just beyond 'is hand...
Oh Ma! I CAN'T! I CAN'T!"
...So I-- "Maybe he was mouthing the words to a song. ...anyway the birds went on and he was still warmed by the April sun
when they found him."
My daughter, Phoebe knew the kid who didn't make it. We all know them.
...And there is nothing we can do-- but be there in this first real grief, thanking God for the gift of them, for every day-- giving them back to the giver of life along our sad way.