grief.

whitetail. (poem sketch)

it is autumn, and he is missing. leaves

are falling, and he is not there. you

look for him in the drying clink of summer

coppers, their hollow-throated rattle, the

pecking of a flicker, search

the leaflessness for pulses of rose-hip,

an intermittent semaphore of chokecherries,

reddened eyes of the crane—you cannot stop

the shining plain of grief rising

inside you, a shoulder-blade sharp

and jutting, like under the soft skin

of a stalking animal,shifts with a

pained loping amongst bloodless grasses.

always a presence, there in the field,

waiting—for the sky’s empty weight,

falling from bent branches in the chest,

settling on the thin limbs of lung

those clouds, marrowless.

you have seen in these trees

what we are made of: sinewy nests

strangling each joint as grief attaches,

makes every breath ache. reminds us

that what connects us, moves us apart.

further and further between the birches

the last sunlight in your fingers, division

made visible. always reaching

for something that can never be touched:

grasped not with your hands, your mind,

not even in language. like the deer

disappearing, boundless into woods at sundown,

leg-splaying leap and soundless landing –

(o maybe if you are really quiet,

really still, he will come back to you)

no. just a whitetail brushing the air

with anxious snow, vanishing flag

in the aspens, absence.