Your death must be loved this much.
You have to know the grief — now.
Standing by the water’ s edge,
looking down at the wave
touching you. You have to lie,
stiff, arms folded, on a heap of earth
and see how far the darkness
will take you. I mean it, this, now —
before the ghost the cold leaves
in your breath, rises;
before the toes are put together
inside the shoes. There it is — the goddamn
orange-going-into-rose descending
circle of beauty and time.
You have nothing to be sad about.