Rounding A Curve

They look like knees, these two
stones at the foot of the hill. I brake, even
though I know what they are, afraid

I may bruise or break one of them.
Molly does not know my hesitation,
with all its limitations. She is focused

on the run through the stones,
over the graves, around the crypts.
To be a dog and not care, I think,

as I park the car on the shoulder,
realize I don't even look to see
whose name is etched in stone,

whose shoulders lie beneath the clean
mown lawn, to question whether they
ever touched another's shoulders, arms,

torso, whether they knew love or not,
whether anyone remembers who they
were, their mother long since gone, a father,

perhaps, gone as well. I don't even stop
to read the names any longer--the Lula's,
the Falcon's, the Lesbia's, the Williams.

I wonder what has happened to my wonder,
if this landscape has become family to me, part
of my every day, the easy chair in the living

room, the cheap plastic chair under the carport,
the tarnished abalone shell on the porch filling
with ashes and ashes and ashes, wonder gone

to dust, life's pull the drag from the lips on a
cigarette smoked in the dark, knees crossed
on a swing whose motion relies on me.