Day Six: ‘Thousand Finnegans’

Along the strip nuzzling against the graveyard,

two joggers hop along in the April sun.

I saw them. They did not see me. The guy

had on a green skull cap, the girl a headband,

both soaked in forehead sweat. They jumped back at

the dog gnashing against the hot chain link,

peered sternly at the roadside wooden cross vendors

rubbernecking the building going up in black smoke,

ran afoul of the thousand Finnegans

and Murphy graves that held their menacing ground

out in the vast minefield of dirt and bone.

It’s a shame, really, what became of their afternoon —

the loss of meaning near the cemetery,

gone in a wash of cop sirens and blood.