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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.