In lieu of flowers,
we’ll bring that time you burned
toast and stunk up the whole down-
stairs, and the sound of your boots
through empty halls. We’ll bring that
old brown hat, seven August meteorites,
and the hoarse Harrison, hoarser McCartney,
trembling, tired, joyous— only one more
time, I promise —helter skelter out the window
and into the open
air.
We’ll bring the change from your pocket: pennies,
for luck. We’ll bring the bar-
codes, the maps, the trail hiked so often as to feel
like coming home, now long and wicked, switched
and swiveled, green; we’ll bring the thunder
dodged all the unwound way
back to the car.
And we’ll bring that summer
the birds got into the woodshed,
pried the dry-packed Burpees,
scattered
cosmos
from door to hedge— that sum-
mer you let it all grow wild.
Gwen lives and works in the West Chester area. She graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2005, and was born in Santa Fe.