Two pupils you know
watch you. They see your Civil War
in your homespun suit,
the threads of your mother’s
makeshift mind
embroidered on your bosom.

You are ready to leave
the fallen apples,
your father’s broken ladder
behind in the backyard.
How the branches become elegy!
See them reach down to his sleep
in the cool thin grass?

Professor of the dead,
you tighten your collar
with the words of an evening sermon,
its smallest stars burning
your right palm.