For some reason
I am thinking of types
as in the movies
where in scripts
they capitalize them so:
HOT BABE
WORRIED BYSTANDER

Here in this cemetery
the types are engraved in stone
Mother
Father
Dear departed daughter
Son
Beloved
A defining phrase that must always fail
The complexity of the person
shreds in this bold breeze

As we were leaving our house
a crow circled in the driveway
crying
Not the usual caw-caw
but some personal avian anguish
And once in New Mexico
we were awakened
to the oriental cry
of a bereaved peacock husband
whose wife and offspring
were devoured by a coyote

We who are living
view other living ciphers
as simplistically as a grave phrase:
Mother
Father
Husband
deaf to the cries they emit,
the secret machinations of their psyche,
their idiosyncratic longings oblique as a foreign movie,
their kind deeds unseen,
the berries on the bush
that the peacock
plucks for his slaughtered wife

Fiction writer and poet CLAIRE ORTALDA has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Her awards include Georgia State University and national Hackney fiction prizes.