Nadia Chaney
Eulogy Under Ice
on your anniversary I found
a striped chorus frog
widely staring the too soon thaw
hands tiny forever outreaching
knees wide pressed open and flat
how much I wanted to keep him
though of course I didn’t
that wet dead thing
the fierce pine beetle
its fiendish chew
when winter weakened by
a billion suns
relinquished
you
unchecked to the landfill
of cold bones and folded clothes
and the pine
undaunted big brothers
of snow and white deer
for sawdust and rough twine
though your shortened life is more
boreal forest ripped apart
like lace seams of a bride betrayed
by forces that never felt
the seasons of your skies
the pulse of salmon
in your veins
today your wet eyes hang over me
in snow-full clouds that drift
down in tiny silent psalms
with the northern highway of your old letters
cutting through lost mountains of time
and the old country of us
now empty standing only
unseasoned birds who search for home
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