Burial
— Rashna Wadia
From a window I watch
the librarian kneel
in the parking lot as if to pray.
He bows his head. Pleats the soil.
Tucks a sapling into a box
like a casket.
So many hearses loop by the library
when I visit. I wonder why
it’s quiet today.
No sirens. No circling gulls.
I’m eight and I want to ask him
about the word, undertaker,
why he dresses the rootlets,
irons dirt with his hands.
Beside the boarded homes
and broken beer bottles
kids my age sit on the curb
of Prospect Street and wait.
None of us know what green is
yet, how we will grow,
rewilding over concrete.
Watercress, fistfuls of mint,
sugar maples. Lobed
to camouflage what remains
cuffed, to the chain-link fence.
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