Is It Cloth
Death, your blazer is blue dumb cloth, durable
against ribs put leaning on stains, snapshots,
letters out fishing words while you’re up gathering
years I will be. Is it how wine swells with seams
straining, bagged crowds excited to have you,
friend, dear? Meat living like words, ice and vodka
with place, kitchen in easy space, a backward movie,
home, the running sandwich of ceremony, a fish,
tuna and bread bites reassembling in schools, fields,
our unlaced hands praying. Garage the idling car,
Death. Collage a different “together” and paste it
on the stairs, unwind the how, friend, old, life -
you of Day Last - think of me.
Inside, dry and hot, are you.
Outlines press this skin.
Soul pods flinging a milkweed scatter, a heart,
mine, in August delivered. Ticket a right, an in,
spotlight a hole, a pocket I’ll be left In.
Ecstatic visit to come, you’ve recognized life,
mine centered at the sky dog. Jacket blue, you
wear Death after August. Is it cloth? this “How”
of your saying I shall?
.
[after Maxine Kumin, "How It Is", Contemporary American Poetry, fifth edition]
