Cat Bones in the Flower Beds

A Surprise Phone Call, on Day of the Dead

For Helen 

After the afternoon dishes,

Sara drove to the cemetery,

she was looking for you

but couldn’t find the stone,

sat down beneath a tree instead.

She wasn’t surprised

when the birds came.

Dozens of them,

appeared out of nowhere

and shot up

to the five-o’clock

east coast moon.

She picked up her phone.

The sky

is purple orange,

she said, and it’s dangling

like a dream catcher,

above all the dead bodies,

and all the living ones too.