a man thinks of another man far away; the heaven and earth that gave birth to his mysterious, unique flesh. morning spills its invisible milk across the lawn. children flag a bus, lunch pails banging knees, buckeyes explode by themselves and fall. spring, in Ohio, from his parents’ window, the mother gone to work, the father one year dead: the grass leans up between the stones by the fence. the schoolbus gone. an ant crosses the desk carrying a small white crumb — the desk where he’d find him asleep with a book wide awake on his lap, those nights, thinking it is natural therefore inevitable — unaware, unaware that grief can never be rehearsed.