(I can remember my own grandfather;
A strong, tall, self-sufficient-seeming man.
In the first car from his daughter's hearse where a child
Took up an empty seat, I heard him say, broken-voiced:
Parents shouldn't bury children).

It was a time when parents buried children.
Flu and cholera and whooping cough were reasons.
Not a fire. Not a push, a scream, a shock, a blanket
Wrapped about a limp and stinking treasure.
Sometimes things went wrong.

(I know what it means to lose a sister.
Lose? Killed, really, ripped away while we weren't watching.
You can guard them and card them and buckle them and airbag them and
Ground them and pay and pray and still they squirm
Out of your hand and fall into the gaping ground).

There came a time to carve a name for eyes that couldn't know her.
And if you didn't choose the one the midwife wrote that summer
Morning, the one that should have been on diploma and ketubah;
If you chose the one you rocked and sang and called her home by--
Sometimes some things are right.