AGAINST ERASURE

Louie gunned down in his shop,
             Boris struck and flung to asphalt by the drunk driver,
                           and now,
                                   David’s body slumps in his car on a parched

Florida highway, his shot clean, the note back home
                on a packing crate addressed to his son. I can think of nothing
                             but family curses,
                                          omens-by-numbers. Our men gone out in a spark

of metal, a black-mottled flash. Erasure
             is its own law, respects no one, not even those
                       who know randomness
                                  only as the lone woodland creature too slow in the road.

Against deletion, our own mitochondria swirl,
            unmoored from the layered loam of history.
                           The northern white cedars
                                        of our great-grandparents’ age guard mountain

foothills in the variegated distance. I marvel
            at just how many roots can be rent from you
                       before your life forgets
                                   to rouse, believe the next day can contain you.