3,000 Turns Against Death
When Donne said Death, thou shalt die,
he surrounded it with commas, breath
through the barrier, the first ward
against the unbearable. Second: this
tongue traced to teeth. Even
just held there. Do you feel it?
The next you must attend to
like prayer. At every watch, take
your child’s face in hand and say: this
is the most important thing [comma]
are you listening? and tell her
—[you know what to tell her].
And with the words anapest, citadel,
caesura, with the ash mark, [ae, ae],
may you recall that 3,000 years ago
someone’s beloved knelt in a pair
of woolen pants by a graveyard
in China. There were probably tears,
fingers sunk beyond the skin
of the dirt. I only know for sure
that skeins of wool were pulled across
the loom into bands of interlocking, hooked
chevrons. At the knees of this soul grieving,
or dying, and certainly now dead—beauty
holds. I have added these: tessellations, knees,
hands on loom. Other amulets against death
include: books found with margin notes,
the way your grandmother taught you
to watch the edges of pancakes crisp
and dry before flipping, animals
named after stars, stars, ribbons braided
into hair [comma] [comma] black currant jam.
