DEATH, AT NIGHT
It is the long thing
with fingers and a mouth
swallowing the moment
and all the light there is.
A dreamless ocean
shallowing at its edge -
a marsh, an inlet,
in late fall or early winter
when the weather changes.
The night,
long, but afterwards,
like my neighbor Annie,
who after the death of her husband
of fifty years, the next day
swept clean the porch
and set out pots of flowers
along its edge - geraniums
to meet a broad and silenced day.
An abandoned shore
of arrival and departure,
the slack tide washing and washing,
the beach swept clean
reaching and reaching
beyond the reach
of ever seeing.
