Anniversary with Busted Taillight
There remain the Pleiades, dark filling stations
deer crossing signs, waspish hum of planes departing Teterboro.
She belongs to the permafrost when we close her eyes
that final touch a perfected abandonment.
Time of death’s a smudge on a sheet, white irises
unfurling for their bow. The taillight blinking its blind lens
then a summons calling us to court. Night is parable & salt
scourging the throat. Officer, forgive the last of too many lapses
through those days, months of her quiet dying.
So many things unattended to— musty cabinets, withered grass
though not, dear heart, thermometer, lozenge, tablespoon
or stars that follow you from the Palisades, sugar crystals sifting down.
Could we say grief’s pitch shattered the oculus while we tried on prayer?
We will be called to account for that breakage, by & by.