Elegy For Elsabet

So the fields are stubble, the garden's done

Where the scary scarecrow stands

Sees her holding up horizons with her hands

She's so tired of reading daddy's lips

That essay on a frown

Watch her memories of human voices drown

Let horsey bray break between the thunder boom

Make grasses' swish meet the crickets' ring

Let every sound consecrate our whispering

The words that Betta never heard

So the back lanes tie the city down

A mess of dirty string

Winter dies the same way every spring

As the sky tries on its uniform

Of turned off TV gray

And the ways we watched her watch us walk away

Let every rain clatter down at groaning streets

Make footsteps tick, talk to echoed walls

Let every sound consecrate our whispering

The words that Betta never heard

Let every wind howl and creak the creaking doors

To rooms that too much has happened in

Let every sound consecrate our whispering

The words that Betta never heard