non-perpetual care

by Caroline Meek

upon entering BLOCK 8
and finding a chipmunk, compact, on a low wall and
hearing the Fed-Ex truck moving up the road
and pushing back against wind that’s picking up and
transporting a small cotton puff in the mid-distance
and describing the lichen in bubble-cloud formation and
seeing a telephone wire sheathed in orange 
and reading names that are dissolving and
don’t belong to anyone 
and stepping over a walnut disassembled and
left in a pile of caramel brown and raw green
and walking past gravestones tilted out of earth and
noticing how the chipmunk is gone now
and the wind has gone still and
observing a dog and his owner sitting in the grass
and resting by a grave and
wondering if they are just cemetery visitors like me
or if they might have blood underneath this dirt.