Her Father Painted Four Crows

        "There is no poem that will bring back the dead"
                Dorothea Lasky

Weep, toss the handful of soil
and mourn the devastating lack:
the words just beyond your grasp,
soulful phrases might bring them back
if spoken in some perfect way.

Did grandmother remember the dead
as her father painted four crows
listening to their caws on the wind
so far away from gusty Chicago's
streets early that month of May?

And yet it traveled on the breeze
from far off Haymarket Square:
the verses cursed in gunfire and bombs,
later strung from four nooses there,
a litany scattered the birds away.

So weep each year, toss the soil
and mourn that devastating lack:
the words just beyond our grasp,
soulful phrases never bring them back
with caws of crows in early May.

 
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2009 Survivor Bonus Round Challenge #4: May Day