moon,
while it rains
I’ll stitch
the part of me
that’s receded
and let
the wet in.
It’s a rain that skids
like a skipped rock
across the rippling
veneer of an in-
coming
tide.
I think: it rained
like this when
my mother
died.
And her eyes
would not close
all the way. And those
great limp lids
seemed
perpetually
paused,
a curtain on a rope
in an old theatre
whose last show
still holds
echoes
in motes
of paused
of paused
frequencies,
a pitch
below what new
ghosts in their new
clothes can hear.
The stage,
her hospital room
is half lit,
and the curtain
parted open or parted
closed
hangs as limp as
a sleeping bat.
I don’t know
how long I wanted
to wait
for those drapes
to unfold. For the nurse
to confirm
what I'd known,
so I waited behind
her
last breath out
and saw
in my head
those
great tar
pits bubbling up
from some deep,
whose scattered bones
were bleached
or were black
as if their last resolve
to let themselves sink
still hung on somehow
even after all their air
had been taken away
breathed in
and out, in and out,
in and out
by me.
By you.
By the whole theatre.
I wanted to crawl
beneath the stage
of it
all
become fetal again.
Or maybe I wanted that
later.
Because when
I am looking back
and trying to figure
out what I had seen
and heard,
it means that I have to be
born once more.
And honestly,
I don’t think I’m up
for that
yet.
So when bats settle
flat and fold in,
and the theatre is
cleared
and all the applause
has gone out
and found
another venue
it’s simple enough
to stand up
touch a cooling body
one more time
and stare down
on it all before it
goes up
in a smoke not unlike
an ovation,
and the birds
flying by the chimney,
dusted by what escapes,
take it back
to their winter cliffs
by the river.
And whatever
isn’t urned
is out and flowing
out and flowing
finally naked
and unafraid
in the drizzle and rain.
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