Maps of the World, and: Shell Casings

That summer we lived a quarter milefrom the prison, we saw the inmates often

beyond the walls, or climbing from the buses,or swinging their scythes into the infinite

at the road's verge. Maybe a day moonlingered in the sky's mud above them,

the neurasthenic hours as thin as a whisper.You were pregnant that July for the second

time, and as the sixth month neared,I could tell you were fearing the same

thing would happen once again. And fromthe upstairs windows of the rental,

we could see the men in their orangejumpsuits, see them milling in the yard

or playing basketball or spearing trashalong the median of the county road.

And did those men parse grass and grasshopper,earth and earthworm; or dream of God

with his tap, tap, tap like summer rain,with his clear streams and dark stones,

with fire in his teeth? Or maybe they studiedthe maps of the world lifting in the dirt,

dust devils evolving or devolving intonearly human shapes. Or maybe they marveled

at the way each new passing car would startthe tall grass trembling around them.

Shell Casings

I will arise and go now …

—W. B. Yeats

My brother would line up the bulletson the back porch and arrange themin such an exact formation that I wasalmost sad when he pushed the first oneinto the chamber and I watchedthe .22 casing fly, watched the tin canjump or the blue jay become a confettiof feathers or the squirrel dropfrom its high limb to convulseon the grass before growing still.But when my brother shot Ralph,the neighbor's cat, and we buried himnear my mother's tomato plants,I kept remembering as we dropped his limpbody into the hole how he would rubagainst my legs each time I crossedinto the next yard to ask Mrs. Orlenif she needed her lawn cut or her weedsplucked or her driveway shoveled.For days we heard Mrs. Orlenalternately calling Ralph Ralphthen Kitty Baby Kitty Baby, whichI found myself remembering last summerwhen my own cat was dying slowlyof kidney failure. In Spike's final weeksI carried him sometimes out the back doorso we could lie together by the pond,and I would look up at the old world of the sky while he studied a dragonflyflitting atop the quiet, green waters.Or I would run a hand across his furand recite—as best I could—the linesfrom "The Lake Isle of Innisfree,"which he seemed to appreciate,more or less, and I spoke the words againon the afternoon we buried him not farfrom my wife's tomato plants. And as Igripped the shovel, I rememberedhow those casings would be warmto the touch after having flown toward meon the porch, and how Spike's fur collectedand hoarded the heat of the sun as he laywith his eyes closed. And I recalledmy long-dead brother touching a handto my shoulder as we stood above the grave,and how he told me to go inside, to let himfinish up, that it was all OK, that everythingwas OK, to trust him … it was OK.