Poetry

The loss you can’t remember.
Crumbling walls, the mind’s stupor.
The haze at the horizon, the loss
indistinct, the stammered words
repeating themselves.
You can’t remember.

A sleeper
purifies a room.

We have been saved one more time
from what we fear most.

The last uncle is pushing off
in his funeral skiff (the usual
black limo) having locked
the doors behind him
on a whole generation.

Almost always, it’s just getting dark
when you come back, when you arrive
on this street;
dark
and perhaps just beginning to rain,

I want to give you
more than these words
finite as husks
or a string of barbed wire.