Bullet.

   Bullet

   Memory must be a way
   of celebrating a holiday
   that does not pass. It is the day
   of atonement, that not enough
   thanks can be given to the departed
   for their simple kindness, taking
   a fork with hard-water stain
   along the tines and offering a gleaming one
   in its place. The day of incompleteness
   that not enough was known, not enough
   memories shared, too much gentle

   stoicism, a family that saw talk as
   furniture, best left along the edges in
   predictable places along the wall.
   But the other holiday, too,
   a joy so thorough it frightens,
   that the morning might flicker
   and vanish, that the happiness
   might be too complete.
   There is a bullet hole

   in the parlor window,
   the glass spidered. It was never
   replaced, year after year.
   Uncle Harland, who died before I was born,
   cleans his rifle, the gun goes off,
   and my great-grandmother is by luck
   alone not sitting in her usual rocker as
   the bullet is out through the kitchen wall,
   out through the sunny parlor,
   to the vast sabbath of the field.