Thaw Poem by Virgil Suárez

The empty mocking bird nests
built into the Y crooks of branches
is enough circumstantial evidence.

In the spring, after the thaw,
the birds found the dead body,
plucked hair one strand at a time,

lined their twig nests with it.
Now the forensics team works
under a tent to keep the sun out

their eyes. Nobody knows how the corpse
came to this place, so near. Only
when a white orb of skull showed

through the moist dirt and a woman walker
mistook it for a budding mushroom,
did they find it. An infants body.

A crown of trees around it. A decade of under
brush it's blanket. Now the trees
are bare again. The child rises

To speak its name, yearning for the way home.