On the drive we see two falcons and one black and white bird               

A mockingjay dad says, 

though he knows that isn’t right.

Detoured, we drive, the horizon gone by

like a puff of smoke.

At the care home in Grenfell, Teresa never says his name     

She knows me as pastor says my father,        

though he knows when we leave

she will lean in and say,  

as she always does,

I wouldn’t recognize you on the street anywhere.            

 I wouldn’t know who you were if you told me.

On the drive home, horizon gone by

like a sheet of ice on the pond,

my father stops the car at the reservation store.

The girl behind the counter talks to him softly.

Later, in the car, he will tell me         

I buried her mother.

I can’t remember her name.

Back in the car the road splits the field in half—

on one side the wheat has been cut down,     

on the other it has yet to be.

Did you notice the graveyard was big enough he says,

that if all the living died they could be buried there,

but no word about the digging.

Through the windshield the sky overhead is clear,

though clouds rim the edge of the horizon

pushed down and away.

As the light falls, we can see shafts of sun

coming down through the clouds,

angled and translucent,

we see right where they fall,

and right where they start—

the whole goddamned operation.