Eyeliner Memorial Days

Here is a year, a pattern, familiar
To the locals who’ve lived here long enough
To link this weather to these holidays.

Everything in the landscape is normal
Or nearly so, but the slippage is close,
Always close. The symmetry is human,

This imposition of more regular
Occurrences than actually occur.
It’s one of the species’ most striking traits—

To delineate, in the performance
Of any distinction, an underscore
So emphatic as to seem eternal—

These rituals, these roles, these alignments.
Even after terrible disruption,
Those who are left of victors and victims

Immediately seize on fresh rhythms,
And before you know it the neighborhood’s
Linked seasons seem sempiternal again.