Death

I know that rarity precedes extinction,
Like that of the purple orchid in my garden,
Whose sudden disappearance rattled me.

Jane, in her way, is also beautiful.
And therefore near extinction, I suppose.
She is certainly rare and fragile of  bone.

She insists she is dying, day by dubious day,
And spends her evenings looking at photographs
Of  her mother, who never believed in love.

Rare Jane, I worship you. But I can’ t deny
You access to the endless
With its river of cold stars.

Were there a tear
To spare, where better
To be sure the gesture
Would linger than here
In its own little bottle
Blown from a hot bubble
To mirror a tear.

And were there more
Than one could bear,
So much the better
In the hereafter for
The begetter, a little
Vessel to stopper
Sorrow beyond measure.

And were there a tear
Too few, far better to hire
A weeper, for where
But in a tearful little
Jigger does it figure
No one need settle for
Less than a fair share.

The King saith, and his arm swept the landscape’ s foliage into bloom
where he hath inscribed the secret mysteries of his love
before at last taking himself away. His head away. His
recording hand. So his worshipful subjects must imagine
themselves in his loving fulfillment, who were no more
than instruments of his creation. Pawns.
Apparati. Away, he took himself and left us
studying the smudged sky. Soft pencil lead.

His death in Benares
Won’ t save the assassin
From certain hell,

Any more than a dip
In the Ganges will send
Frogs — or you — to paradise.

My home, says Kabir,
Is where there’ s no day, no night,
And no holy book in sight

To squat on our lives.

And into the heavens, as on a bright day after rain,
there came the shapes of four creatures,
and they each had the likeness of a man,
and each man had four wings outstretched
and each wing had four eyes emblazoned, wide open,
given to weeping at the worlds they contained:

She wears the run-down slippers of a local
and in her arms, five rare protea
wrapped in newsprint, big as digger pine cones.
Our hands can’ t help it and she lets us touch.
Her brother grows them for her, upcountry.
She’ s spending the day on Oahu
with her flowers and her dogs. Protea

1. a night in the barn

The deer carcass hangs from a rafter.
Wrapped in blankets, a boy keeps watch
from a pile of loose hay. Then he sleeps

and dreams about a death that is coming:
Inside him, there are small bones
scattered in a field among burdocks and dead grass.
He will spend his life walking there,
gathering the bones together.

Pigeons rustle in the eaves.
At his feet, the German shepherd
snaps its jaws in its sleep.

Your head is still
restless, rolling
east and west.
That body in you
insisting on living
is the old hawk
for whom the world
darkens.
If I am not
with you when you die,
that is just.

It is all right.
That part of you cleaned
my bones more
than once. But I
will meet you
in the young hawk
whom I see
inside both
you and me; he
will guide
you to the Lord of Night,
who will give you
the tenderness
you wanted here.

The mind goes caw, caw, caw, caw,
dark and fast. The orphan heart
cries out, “Save me. Purchase me
as the sun makes the fruit ripe.
I am one with them and cannot feed
on winter dawns.” The black birds
are wrangling in the fields
and have no kindness, all sinew
and stick bones. Both male and female.

It wasn't the earth that swallowed them. Was it the air?
Numerous as the sand, they did not become
sand, but came to naught instead. They've been forgotten
in droves. Often, and hand in hand,

like minutes. More than us,
but without memorials. Not registered,
not cipherable from dust, but vanished —
their names, spoons, and footsoles.

They don't make us sorry. Nobody
can remember them: Were they born,
did they flee, have they died? They were