DEATH, AT NIGHT

               

                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.