Telepathic Note to Poet Friends

Friends, I’m lonely today.
Nothing’s broken, only today I have no bones
and this softness needs an escort toward its death.
So I’m watching the slow tarantellas of the snowflakes
wink and go out, thinking you’ve been crushed by less.

Lately I’ve admired the classic themes
of Western movies: silence, practice, and space.
Each of us has waited for it to happen,
no matter what. It doesn’t matter what.
It all comes down to facing a gun
and trying to say it while the sun fires away,
the horses melt, and next door a woman shrieks
a perfect poem at her kids. In other words,

we’ve all spent years in rooms snowing darkness,
packing it into shapes of music, or maybe lovers.
So somewhere far off I hear a black piano resound
in sympathy. All I wanted to say, my friends, is
I’m amazed that you’re still singing.