Rest in Warning
In the dark before morning lay the living in their beds
and lay we the dead in ours. Each earth-lidded terminus
not a chamber of rest, but a listening ear to the past.
The dead are with you, difficult as this is to believe.
We know how quickly you turn from mourning
back to the distractions you stretch from hour to hour.
You buy green mangoes from the street vendor
and pink tulips from the corner bodega. Finally alone
in your apartment, the bolt slid against strangers
you collapse in exhaustion. No news, you vow
no devices all the long weekend. The cat nuzzles
your tulips and pushes the vase off the kitchen table.
You can’t get her off the furniture. Here in the yard
at the edge of the Old Town, there’s no keeping
the living out. You are our news, constant and uninvited
opening the iron gate to stroll among our rows.
You place pebbles atop granite markers, whisper our names
as though we can no longer speak. We speak
in the dark before morning when the hooligans come
tagging hate and toppling headstones. They give us voice.
Each thud’s a certain warning that the past is never gone.
As long as the beaver slaps her tail on the pond’s surface
as long as the rabbit stomps his hind leg, this sound
the only sound we make, is our sound of warning.
Leslie McGrath
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