One for Sorrow, Two for Joy

So those are magpies! They do look acquisitive. They hover over the graves like eyebrows or second thoughts, tails held decorously aloft. Each time I raise the camera they take flight—proof they’re not spirits but among the quick. They are, in their black- &-white way, shiny. They remind me of our shared mission: to rob the dead. Their chatter offers a refuge from this refuge where even the weed eater keens, though among their own kind, blessed with sufficient wit to comprehend loss, they’re said to indulge in rituals of grief. I try counting them: one, one, one.