our father named us both Lark—
the pastor at our baptism said
‘Lark songs delivered in flight’
and we shared an attic bed for eighty-three years
long after Our Father and Our Mother had passed
because their room was haunted
their stern portraits above their bed the eyes blinking
we filled it with detritus empty soup cans and papers
and things from the dump in the woods
beyond the blueberry bog the sluices of spring water
from before the Revolutionary War
poison bottles and handblown glass we thought we’d sell
and pistol balls and once a rusted sword
the one cow left we called Seven
that old Moe fed hay and the pears and crabapples
the ancient pear trees barely bloomed anymore
the shallow pond filled with dead cats
the dam long since collapsed
the forest we named Althea
and the Lark songs in flight had tea and doll parties
in our sentient New England woodland our Althea
the smell of pine needles-sponge earth-bergamot
and purple lilacs and bunchberry
and she kept a bear and one moose lived up there
sharing the blueberries in season
then Lark fell sick she stopped eating
electricity long since gone the lamps from 1640
brought to blaze again then no oil
and the long dark nights the freezing nights
trapped smoke from racoon-filled chimneys
the hot summer nights and mosquitoes
filling rooms and fleas of the living cats
on the day my sister starved, 1987,
Old Moe gone to see family in Michigan
we lay in the featherbed shapes carved by decades
and listened to our dead folks talking below
and the New Hampshire bluecoat soldiers in the parlor
the ancient Indians smoking and knapping blades
their babies napping in birchbark beds
then Lark flew my hand on her heaving chest
then still then slowly the trees got eaten I remember
I could hear the crunching of mandibles
in three-four time and Althea screaming from pain
I remember the leaves green to yellow to brown
the branches black to gray to ash
the gypsy moths flooding the mountains
removing Althea’s clothes I remember
and naked she bent to the ground I remember
then the bear and the moose and the cow fled
from the gnash-gnash-gnash
the family’s gravestones the moss dried up
Lark lying back of the fence for Moe to bury
with teacups and doll’s legs Lark calling Lark: sistersistersister
in the gnash-gnash-gnash
but I was paralyzed wings buried in blankets
sisteersistersister dead summer
soaked and marinating the bed drowning
and eaten fell to gnash-gnash-gnash
under the spell of gypsy moths
