In the 1960s

when Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was writing

On Death and Dying

NASA was preparing to fly

an eagle to the moon.
This was before Chernobyl

before The Challenger exploded

before Lindy looked down the barrel of a gun

and said without knowing why it was

a dingo stole her baby.
In clamping jaws

we sleep restlessly

while the cult of the mourning rise early

to dress their wounds. And to worship

Cassini’s sacred loop.
*
In the 1980s

when Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was building

a healing centre to administer hope

and other drugs, her husband divorced her

because she claimed to speak to the dead.
Her black-veil brides are calling

but you refuse to answer

asking instead

what if Reactor 4 shut down

for maintenance

and the O-ring closed

and the Chamberlains, exhausted,

turned back at the rock

and hired a van instead of a tent?
Between parallel ribs

in red desert sand

one woman buries her defence.
*
In the 1990s

when Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was dying

our daughters locked arms and sang

red rover red rover send someone over

and eventually she came.
Perhaps this is why she gave us

numbers instead of names—

she was a triplet—

and three sisters never take

the path of least resistance.
A biography of Earth confirms

light cannot escape a black hole.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is

grief is a lemniscate

that turns on itself.