The Whispering Pines

In the whispering pines
Her husband looked just like
Her child, in his eyes;
There’s yellow tape
At the end of a gravel track
Where they cannot walk
Back to his car, but a dog
Discovered a steering wheel
In the whispering pines.

In the whispering pines
She held the photograph
Up to the light, returned
To its rightful place in her
Dungarees’ front pocket.
She closed her eyes
And remembered walks
On a beach in South Carolina
In the whispering pines.

In the whispering pines
Her husband fell off
The eyes of the earth.
The soil rises slightly
Above a shallow plot
But the gravedigger
Had already flown
To Arizona, as they do,
In the whispering pines.

In the whispering pines
It’s so far from the ocean
The shells do not work.
Never trust a property
With woodland and a conex box
Or a man with a complex
As wide as a god, for there
Are numbered yellow markers
In the whispering pines.

In the whispering pines
Life and loss is a template
To be conformed to,
And we all do sometimes,
In our own ways, lover,
Worker, friend, earlier
Versions of what we want to be.
But the shape went wrong there
In the whispering pines.