no alibi.
The parable
means absent without leave,
you see. I'll keep you
as long
as the woods are deep,
and then I'll let you go.
Eleanor Ross Taylor
MARCH 9
Such days as this it rains in Norwood.
March. The wind whistles under its breath
as that woman did, sewing. Afraid of-?
Yes, it's surely raining in Norwood cemetery.
But here, in the dry shrubbery, bloom's opiate,
the earth rejects the dead,
breezes erase, erase, and the slate's clean.
No . It reads March 9, 1910.
The buggy bumps smartly
along the polished clay.
Under the lap robe hands fuse .
They lie together.
No water floats them out,
the walls a hardened cavity.
A little wet snow fell this day.
The same starved hyacinths rise up among the weeds .
Some backwoods hand will pillage.
