Borders [where I try again to write a poem about a dead friend]
Even now and considering when last
we spoke which is to suggest
a distance as if communication were the table
of communion and not the word
even while timber is stacked and sent
across a land crested in daylight
while the dog and I walk through
recent leaves delivered true as time
which is a truth unwanted
we count the beats of wind and walk
and find nothing, nothing fully
but the year and the year and the years
that this day is preface for tomorrow
that we recall what will be
by skipping breakfast and arriving early
to a work as though it were waiting
a bird against the limb
existing mostly beyond itself
as we do, and we do as we
place it in the crate
or the poem or the hand
not yet closed upon itself
going beyond itself and further
even now and considering
as my friend while bagging groceries
for little money collapsed
his heart silent finally
that his mind could walk free
even beyond the handrails of a pine box
in the cold north where people
clean with teeth the memory of dirt
beneath the nails
of their closing fingers
it all must stay and return
at once intimate and unknown
even the tree outside any window
if a window is what we say
even if the year and the year and the years
if speaking once then forever
and even now consider anything.
