Poem 187

Perhaps from the same East Coast trip as Poem 181 … the first time I encountered plush toys left on the grave of a child, how at once wrong and right it felt to leave them out in the weather …

( I think I really got the sadness of the necessity of moving on into the last image … )

Vigil

My head is stuffed with dead kids' toys
there is nothing on the t.v.
and the motel room is frictionless
neither eye nor brain sticking 
anywhere

the whitened eye of the toy dog
on the grave returns
like a lighthouse it blinks
a hundred miles away
in the rain