Poetry

Twenty years ago there was a life for each of us
to turn away from
or embrace. A song returns to remind me
of what I must have felt,
and when it’s over, I play it back again.

In the book you’ve been reading
it’s the end of the season.
The shades have been drawn
in that house by the lake,

and a woman is standing
alone on the porch. 

My mother’s given up on her dream
of a brand new house. What’s wrong
with what we’ve got, my father doesn’t
say, exactly. “Go ahead” is what he says,

Down empty roads gray with rain;
through branches
of new leaves then still
more light than leaf;

This is what it was like: the morning
pale all above me, a patch of sky
like a blue poker flung into a floor
of earth, this is what I have to go on.
I am on my knees at first, a Jessica
in prayer.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from
    his purse