I think this is actually a short story; but it came out this way first. I'll come back to it.

out in the green fields
pulled on poppy leaves, doing it wrong
he said: watch me jump.
we removed ourselves, and drank sweet tea from a sauce jar,
the lid still stained orange and smelling like
dinner.
he said: watch me jump.

i found his hand, later,
severed at the wrist, palm up & fingers
curled towards the blue sky, waiting for something to hold.
i wanted to put something in it
a bouquet
or a pebble (rounded by seasons of wave crashing,
and smooth and cool and burnt-red)
or a list of reasons and errands.
its architecture explained everything,
the creases on the knuckles spoke in latin and-
the ground newly plowed &
littered with seed;
in the distance, marking off the property line:
a fence, and behind that, the new irrigation ditch.
birdsong and summer like rocksalt, the sun just so
& burning my skin.
at the table, head in his hands, dripping onto the dinnerplate piled
high with breakfast,
his brother said: I never saw him
and I'm not an inattentive man
I shoulda heard him.
and his mother from the kitchen
up to her elbows in salty, too-wet pie dough:
Don't beat a dead horse.
I put the hand on the mantel & pictured it coming free
tossed
by the teeth of the plow
arcing up into the sky (& grasping for it)
and landing, finally, at the side of the road.