###### A Return

In the empty house, in the evening,
I turn the lights on. Outside, the blue
deepens and spreads.

No boundary holds for long.
Smoke pours from a chimney
across the lake. Below me,

a star expands, sheds itself as wind.
There is a thin layer of dust on the piano.
I go to an upstairs bedroom

and hold the door shut.
A moth hurls itself at the window.
I keep asking the same question.

&nbsp;

###### I’ll Never Learn

Remind me again, again, that nothing
belongs to me. What I’ll get in the end is
 	        nothing.

For now, cracked branches,
muck, a darkness
 	        preoccupied with fish, my name, silt-soft hair.

You take
what I give you. You could always
 	        take more.

The lake gleams
like a scar, the sky
 	        like a thin porcelain cup.

Thank you
for taking my father slowly.
 	        It is so painful, I can no longer

distinguish
between love and pain. Today he did not
 	        call for me, and I answered.

&nbsp;

###### Tending

In the kitchen, he offers toast and I refuse.
I stir my tea. When he offers again, I take it.

It’s getting late. The clouds are high and bright
and the two black dogs have wandered to the lake.

They follow me inside to the worn-down rug,
the hissing radiators. The cold gets in

wherever it can. Sometimes he can’t say my name
and I wish I didn’t need it. But the fire

needs kindling and I need to wash the bread knife,
return it to the drawer. Nothing disappears, only becomes

unrecognizable. Smoke pouring from the chimney.
I always miss the exact moment.

&nbsp;

###### Myth

As what can be sensed only by its taking
as light circles an absence,
I do not know it

but I know
it’s close. The trees
are shaking, darker silvers

folding into sky. The rain will come
in almost-dark as swallows
low in the field

forget me.
Already I am a memory
of myself and I know I will be lost

along with the rest of him, lost like time
or light, not gone from the world
but buried

more deeply inside it.
Tonight, deep in the spell of the field
at night, planetary wind, swallows tracing the dark, the rain in my mouth.

Four Poems

You were sitting by the window in the afternoon

and it was snowing. I knelt on the floor.

No matter what I said, you wouldn't stop trying

to get out of your chair. I said, she'll be back soon, 

she had to go downstairs but she'll come back.

You had a hand on each arm of the chair

and you pushed as hard as you could, hunched over, 

your arms shaking until you collapsed.

You couldn't lift yourself at all.

I bent forward so you would see my face

so like your own, so you would know you knew me

and that I was with you in the room. 

Your eyes were blue and blank. 

You were looking into another world. It was quiet

except for the sound of you trying to get out of the room

to find your wife. Except for my voice

saying we only have to wait a little longer,

not much longer. You didn't stop trying to reach her

and I stopped trying to reach you. I knelt on the floor

watching you try over and over,

your shirt damp with sweat.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

It might be selfish to want to tell you 

what happened when you were gone 

from your body, to want you to know 

what it was like, but you were there 

in the room and it's strange 

for you not to know. I want to say I'm sorry

I was sometimes afraid of you 

because when I believed you weren't there

in your body, I didn't know. It was impossible

to know. Today I went into the room 

and it was empty. Every room is empty of you.

In every room, I know you by your absence.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

Twenty-one days after you died, I wrote:

I will give the world back to him, 

the empty sky, the small cold river 

running into a grate at the edge of the road.

I will give him back to the world. 

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

I don’t know where that certainty came from 

or when I lost it. Today is two hundred and ninety-eight days.

I wear your old shirts and listen to your radio shows,

take care of what you would want taken care of:

I clean the kitchen, try to get her to eat. 

I go into your workshop and open 

the drawers of your father’s toolbox 

as you might have done after he died. 

I turn the thimble of a small silver micrometer 

and look for something to measure. I sit in your chair

at your table and try to understand how everything

outlasted you. I listen to your voicemails.

There is one you left when you thought I’d left for good 

without saying goodbye. I had only gone to the store.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

Last night, the clouds were carried off in a current 

and the sky broke apart, and you already know

the light that came through, 

otherwise I couldn’t tell you. When I came inside, 

I saw myself in the mirror

as if I was you, and you looked at me,

and it was the first time I saw my face

after nearly a year apart. 

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

Today I sat on the steps and remembered you

patiently digging a grave for my rabbit.

Its body lay in a shoebox near the trees

and it was raining. You dug a deep grave, deeper

than necessary. You wanted to do it right.

But once it was done, I sat at the window 

and stared at the edge of the yard, imagining 

the cardboard dissolving in the damp ground 

and the rabbit unprotected. You tried to tell me 

why I shouldn’t be afraid, that he wasn’t there in his body 

in the shoebox in the ground

but I was still afraid, so to put me at ease

you went back into the rain and dug up the shoebox 

and took it to your workshop. You built a small pine coffin, 

measuring and marking the wood 

with your pencil, sawing exactly along each line.

You let me stroke the cold soft ears again

then nailed the lid shut.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

I throw myself against each day I’m trapped in.

I go for walks and try to figure out if you still exist: 

if you exist in my memories and each memory

is a world that still exists, then somewhere 

we’re sitting together on a train 

through a cold marsh, the cattails rustling 

in a burning blue sky, and I don’t know if you can hear me 

when I turn to tell you that sometimes I miss you so much 

I can’t keep walking. I watch branch shadows 

wave over the ground like a net.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

We were sitting together by the empty fireplace. 

You were on the phone. You said, “I’m here with—” 

and looked to me. I couldn’t say it. You were the one 

who gave me my name. Outside it was dark, and I imagined

swimming in the lake, in the silence pulling at the center of you

into which you disappeared, slowly 

at first, then all at once.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

I never got used to it. By the time I could account 

for what was lost, I had lost more.

Loss that didn’t seem possible. 

A storm already overhead 

and moving faster. At a certain point, 

we put a lock on every door. I slept with a key 

around my neck and sometimes woke to the sound 

of my door rattling in its frame.

Now I look to the door and imagine you 

on the other side, and I want to let you in.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

Early on, we were walking down the driveway

and you told me there were people in the shadows

at the edge of your vision, sitting on the steps.

You said they always disappeared 

when you turned to look. When they came into the house,

you couldn’t figure out what they wanted, like the morning

you came into the kitchen and found them

waiting for you. They would only say

that they had been waiting for hours.

You were afraid. You tried to tell me 

what was happening, but I could only understand 

parts of what you said. They’re angry with me, you said.

I don’t know why they’re angry with me.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

You forgot that the house you were in

was your own. You forgot how to walk, how to eat.

In the end, lying on your bed, your hands were clasped

and you were mouthing words to the ceiling. Your voice, 

when it came, was like wind. We lifted you upright 

and fed you. You were in pain. We arranged pillows 

and blankets, tried to make you comfortable. We told you 

you were safe. Slowly you looked at us 

and whispered. We couldn’t understand

but we bowed our heads to listen.

One night, I asked if you could hear me

and you nodded. Now, I look to where 

you were, and I don’t need to know 

if you can hear me to keep repeating 

what I need you to know.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

Early in the afternoon, in the hallway

she said, I think he’s gone

and I followed her into the room.

We sat with your body for hours. 

Your wife, your son, your daughter. 

I wasn’t afraid. I held your hand. 

I looked at your hands. I tried to prove to myself

that I had you memorized.

We sat with you and talked to you

and looked at you, and looked at you

until a man and a woman arrived 

from the funeral home. 

They wrapped you in your bedsheets 

and lifted you onto a stretcher. We carried you 

down the stairs of the house.

Carefully, they put you in the car 

and shut the door. We watched 

as the car pulled out of the driveway

and turned into the road.

&nbsp;

*

&nbsp;

Sometimes, suddenly and briefly

you appeared, though it happened less 

towards the end. Like a few seconds of music

in relentless static, a clear familiar phrase.

Only weeks before you died, I heard you 

calling for me from the next room

like you were trying to wake me from a dream.

Your voice was strong and clear.

I heard the voice I remember calling my name.

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