Waterfall (On the Death of My Daughter’s Teacher)

Grandparents are hard enough
and fish and hamsters.
Now a teacher
she has loved for years,
she but aged ten.

Her voice is subdued on the phone.

I pick her up.
She recalls how we cut out together
markers for graves.
I suspect it’s AIDS,
though that word has never been
mentioned.

She is brave and remembers the fun.

She is also stunned
by death, yes, and separation.
Being young, she adjusts to pain,
springs up
like a stepped on flower.

We make our way
to the Point and stare down at the river.
We can hear a ruckus.
We accept it as water’s thunder.
Then the sun clouds over.

By the time we get back to the car,
it is raining buckets.