Judson Evans

Vigil

An ant circles the “O” of October—Circus Maximus, carved in granite. A rain of hay drifts at the turning post. The sound of the mowers far above, blue sky of another world . . . The rest of the letters and numbers—your full name/your empty dates: the simple maze of 8, the oxbow of S, the great serpentine without its Versailles, the drained locks of H, its empty artificial waterways. The great moulds emptied of molten summer. The prison yards, pristine canals, the stalls and slave quarters of E.

laying above you
tracing the Braille
of your name

The boys on riding mowers, their fluttering open legged khakis, legs with their dark growth of hair, close cropped summer haircuts consciously ungainly, spoiling to mar the beauty you will see to, dead or alive. All the things you would say like a hive at the end of summer.

teenage mower
rests his gas can
on someone’s grave