Monday, After Easter

 Monday, After Easter

We unpacked the truck from Spring Break 

then loaded right back up to celebrate

Easter Sunday and its brazen hope, heavy 

as the brooder box of chicks I unearthed

from the basement and carried outside 

after church to give them a first taste 

of a light bright enough to shatter 

their little heat lamp, their cooped-up 

minds. That night I brought them back 

inside, woke Monday before sunrise 

to find one of them dead, crowned 

with another’s warm shit on the cold angle 

of its feathered head. I buried her 

beneath the oak tree, then scraped

together a lesson plan for a room 

of students who—having just sampled

Summer—slouch beneath the weight

of just how far we are from that 

sun-kissed self. Is this, then, the real gift 

of these brief reprieves, not to lighten the load 

but more keenly know the heaviness 

of all we lack? Anyway, welcome back.