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