POEM: Signs

Why does the flag fly at half-mast tonight / it is for breezes quitting / Or the naked trees / Or the look of hungry crows with deep eyes / in search of bread / cawing at the leaner days ahead / When I pass a church / and at every meal / I make the sign of the cross / just as I was taught growing up / Just as I still bow my head / when the name of “Jesus” / is spoken aloud / But I was never taught what sign to make / at a flag half raised / Especially When the deceased is unknown / It’s a blank gravestone / that waits for a Godly script to be written / A name perhaps a date or a clue to his faith / What remains is what I can never know / Is what has already been done / in living songs / in the friction / that life brings along with it / in the haystacks of debt that we owe to history / Which is a story / shivering to be told.