"Have At It."
It's a little work poem.
"When you work here for 10 years, you get a blanket.
The blanket has their name on it, not yours.
I am conducting an anecdotal survey of longtime employees.
And I have yet to find one person who
uses the thing to keep warm.
M reported placing it between her children and the dirt
before they all sat down to a meal outside.
S recounted how she'd wrestled it out
of a hat-stuck bureau drawer to wrap her beagle's body after he
died.
She buried that dog herself in her bloom-less little side
yard and registered embarrassment when the meter
reader caught her there, intoning over
the body with a hymnal.
But why should she be embarrassed?
It certainly can't be beneath us to bless our animal dead
when all our scientists do all day is endeavor to prove
that great apes mourn, that elephants mourn,
that house flies mourn, that when a fiddle leaf
ficus succumbs, another ficus keens in its earthenware.
We would like to confirm that everyone
is recognized in death, unseen as we are in this life.
It's all we have."
Here are two state poems.