CONSIDERING IMMORTALITY
(a question)
And what is April if not the
hangover flesh of winter bunched
and gray from too little light,
poverty’s uplifted face? The only
month that never ends or begins,
gone legless before summer.
Scant breaks in rain to walk the
hounds, shed cloak of winter’s
unease; silence echoed by two
awakened early amid
sparse and trembling light.
(a memory)
Chilled, covetous of warm yielded
bodies, small silences held in your
mouth, in mine. A promise drags
memory forward, the soft
curtain over the past, lifted.
(a fact)
Our drowning more probable
now, like birds partially submerged,
feathers of our stomachs weighted.
Only mortals carry the past forward,
work it tenderly into the future, worry
it into prayer beads, our fingers
busy with what our hearts
no longer manage.