the streets of Philadelphia are emptied tunnels
dark as the lungs of stricken daughters
it’s strange that the more horrible the news becomes
the greener the summer grass evolves
the aloof and sturdy oak and maple trees
wave coincidentally above our family’s terror
while my father’s sister Dorothy waits her turn to be buried
a hundred-ten others ahead of her tagged “Influenza”
stacked up in the funeral parlor hallway, inanimate as countertops –
when the time came she was put into the ground
grey gauze on her skin concealed the promises underneath
crushed to smithereens

not knowing how to heal grandmother, sat in the parlor lamp-lit dusk
seeking words that might match what she felt
in her dreams soiled white masks and latex gloves blew through Kennett Square,
detritus flung into dead alleyways

...finally September came...the sun softened
time for grieving...
outside the dying brown and yellow leaves fell away
from the boughs that had held them
faltering, spinning, closing in together, as though for comfort,
along the autumn lawn