West Paris, Maine

So much unspoken
between you
and your mother
who wants to kiss us
with her sad, sad mouth;

Outside, the streets no better,
bricks and shut doors,
strangling heat and no one home.

A train winds
like the smoke of snuffed candles
past the old toothpick factory,
over the bridge, out of town
and into the unknown

of your burial in Norway
where a wind threshes
the cemetery, once a field
where Mom learned to walk.

All of this
and naked oak trees,
the vacuum of outer space
among them.

Ora pro nobis,
why not,
but pray for the living also,
left behind
to wrestle angels.