Death

The boy painted himself white and ran into the darkness.

We let the words “he may be dead, bury him,”
bury him.

We took his clothes to the rummage sale
in the basement of the mission
We put his photographs and drawings
in a birdcage and covered it with a starquilt.

For four nights voices carried clear to the river.

After winter so many storms moved in
strangers came among us
They danced
They shoveled in the shadows of trees

Then, somehow we all felt
all of us were of this one boy.

I lift my body one leg then another over the cold curve of
the claw-foot tub
Like a walking stick with a colossal cocoon attached
A beast and a mutant I am this

Hooked on the steam of hot water I
Negotiate stretched skin a sore spine the splitting of imminent birth

What do you want

Mammoth a domemoon stomach
Carved by spidery trails former settlement

You in there baby think you’ re ready for this

They are a gift I have wanted again.
Wanted: One moment in mountains
when winter got so cold
the oil froze before it could burn.
I chopped ferns of hoarfrost from all the windows
and peered up at pines, a wedding cake
by a baker gone mad. Swirls by the thousand
shimmered above me until a cloud
lumbered over a ridge,
bringing the heavier white of more flurries.

I scratch earth around timpsila
on this hill, while below me,
hanging in still air, a hawk
searches the creekbed for my brothers.
Squat leaves, I’ ll braid your roots
into such long ropes, they’ ll cover
the rump of my stallion.
Withered flower, feed us now
buffalo rot in the waist-high grass.

You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead,

but I have lived two decades longer now than you

and all this time I have carried you in my head

so I think I have the right to question what you said,

dear teacher. My religious upbringing’s residue,

you would have thought it foolish. To speak to the dead,

however, is sometimes necessary, especially haunted

by all the things I know you hoped I’d do

with all this time that I have carried you in my head.

In a dream last night I followed where you led

Mistress Adrienne, I have been given a bed with a pink dresser
In the hothouse
Joining the Concord Public Library: the walls and roof are
Glass and my privacy comes from the apple-geraniums,
Violets, ferns, marigolds, and white mayflags.
I get my meals
With the janitor and his wife and all of the books are mine
To use. I scour, sweep, and dust.
I hope you don’t think of me
As a runaway? I remember your kindness,
Your lessons in reading and writing on the piazza.
My journey was unusual. I saw some of the war

for Dave Smith
Our clothes are still wet from wading
The Chickamunga last evening.
There is heavy frost. We have
Walked on the dead all night.
Now in the firelight
We are exchanging shells and grapeshot.

I can still hear our loud huzzah
When late in the day
The enemy fell into full retreat
Along the pine ridge to the east...

We chased them until we were weary.
Each night this week
There’s been something
To keep me from sleep. Just an hour ago
I saw

Small type of great ones, that do hum
Within this whole world's narrow room,
That with a busie hollow noise
Catch at the people's vainer voice,
And with spread sails play with their breath,
Whose very hails new christen death.
Poor Fly, caught in an airy net,
Thy wings have fetter'd now thy feet;
Where, like a Lyon in a toyl,
Howere thou keep'st a noble coyl,
And beat'st thy gen'rous breast, that o're
The plains thy fatal buzzes rore,
Till thy all-bellyd foe (round elf)
Hath quarter'd thee within himself.

When from the vaulted wonder of the sky
The curtain of the light is drawn aside,
And I behold the stars in all their wide
Significance and glorious mystery,
Assured that those more distant orbs are suns
Round which innumerable worlds revolve,—
My faith grows strong, my day-born doubts dissolve,
And death, that dread annulment which life shuns,
Or fain would shun, becomes to life the way,
The thoroughfare to greater worlds on high,
The bridge from star to star. Seek how we may,
There is no other road across the sky;

All night I cried in agony
Of grief and bitter loss,
And wept for Him whom they had nailed
Against the shameful cross.

But in the morning, in the dark,
Before the east was gray,
I hastened to the sepulcher
Wherein the body lay.

The stone was rolled away I found;
And filled with fear and woe,
I straight to His disciples ran,
Thereof to let them know.

I said, 'The body of the Lord
Is not within the tomb;
For they have taken him away
Unnoticed in the gloom.