Three Poems

Harvey Cushing’s Brain Tumour Registry Leaves Boston in Early Fall

When it came down to it, Eisenhardt hadn’t the heart to crate them.
Fasten them back. Hadn’t these beautiful ruins made their way

in the dark long enough and didn’t they deserve one last hayride?
The jars every which way, the way of a root cellar

pulled into the light. Gliomas, adenomas, meningiomas rubbing
shoulders under seats, in the aisle. She drives slow

down Centre Street, past the Arboretum, formalin rippling
the windows like syrup. Out of the bustle, a gentle clinking

as of milk bottles. South then west past egret steeples, red peeling
barns, past saltbox houses and old mills and stone walls, the already

honeying oaks, beeches, larches. Those numberless iterations
holding up somehow so mostly it was a marvel and a mercy

more things didn’t go wrong. She stops at a tearoom for coffee
with cream. Outside, the bus is radiant with the September-stained

sky, its whorl of cloud and swallows. Back on the road past marshes,
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