The Viewing

A new poem featured in my upcoming collection (also entitled The Viewing).

Fletcher Park, at a bend in Candies Creek, taken 1 April 2011.

She carried something small,
retrieved from the passenger seat of her car,
wrapped in white cloth, a handkerchief maybe,
both hands held out and cupped together tightly,
like someone trying to hold water, and that is how
she moved, each step measured, deliberate, careful
not to spill the contents of the bowl she had made.

She walked from the parking lot to the tree line,
the handle of a garden spade protruding from her pocket,
and stopped just beyond the place where
the clearing met a wide row of second growth
maple, birch, and oak, each festooned for autumn,
embarrassed at their lack of decorum,
considering the somber occasion.

She knelt a few yards into the woods,
placed her burden on the forest floor,
and bowed her face to the ground,
to place one last kiss upon a soft brow, or
to whisper a final farewell to deafened ears, or
to cast a covetous glance upon this lost treasure
she would bury through a haze of tears,
all the while unconscious of my gaze.

I waited until the brake lights of her car
could no longer be seen in my rear-view mirror,
and I slinked, indulgent yet self-conscious,
toward the spot where she had lingered,
moving underbrush aside and scanning the ground
for signs of where she had moved the earth or 
the many fallen leaves to cover what she left behind,
but nothing stood out, and so I left without knowing
who or what it was to which I meant to pay my respects.