Iron Mountain

I fed the last pictures of us
into the narrow slit

of the confidential
recycling bin.

We move offices next month.
I won’t be able to sit all day

Looking out at the busy river
like I’ve loved ever again.

The shaggy migrators came & left
with the Halloween candy
.
Buy-one- get-one Cormorants & Black Ducks.
An aisle of last season’s Herons.

I read once it’s in their bones
the way they know where to stop

a bit to rest before heading
wherever they’re getting to next.

That year after year it’s the same
finches buttering the fence.

God they look young
I thought of us –

already slipping
into darkness

small holes still showing
from where we hung.

picking mulberries

from over the top
of the cemetery’s brick

I bring my hand back
to the living side

any time I see
headlights

I’d hoped      for longer
than I’d care to say

to make something
that preserved me

but now I see
that what stays

is what leaves
a stain

just me my purple
fingertips

this short bruised
season we all get

anyway      I am
coming home to you

anyway      the bag I brought
is getting full

mile marker

I wasn’t smart enough
to know that I was dying

which was good
because I was losing

so much blood
back into myself

a closed loop
of hurt an emt

pressed on lightly
& called a hot belly

they rolled me
from the soft shoulder

of the road
onto a spineboard

then plenty happened
while I was asleep

riding the ink gravity
of fentanyl & nothing

twice caught in the orbit
of what comes next

really – I just wanted to be home
in my life and its mess

please god I said
let me be the same

though what kind of wish
was that

I was changed
but mostly in a boring way

like the elephant-in-a-pill
we dropped in a bucket

to swell 500 times its size
hours later – we fished it out

a chewed bazooka pink
we drove the car

right over the top of it
but even that couldn’t make it shrink