The widow from Ohio who goes to her son’s
          grave every Sunday and reads part of a story
just like she did each weekend when he was
          a boy, always leaving part of the story for the next time,
stories she was told as a girl, the one where
          the boy who can’t find his way home is led
by a bird—twuuu, twuuu—one of many to guide
          the soul. “Time is a flat circle,” Nietzsche said,
“and we live the same lives over and over,” but there seems to be
          joy in ritual and repetition, in grabbing the circle
with one hand, holding on. Sometimes she’ll come home,
          place a stone in front of the mirror, then blow
into a cup of dust and say, it’s time, the time looping
          into the stories where her boy, rapt, listens to another
boy’s plight, opening door after door, until there are none
          for the listener, no longer listening, so that the grave
becomes a kind of mirror, its shadow pregnant with hers