Noelle Kocot
Your Death
Who is to say that all men
Are not amnesia-laden gods
Who carry their genius in bags,
That each sunrise will not bear
Envious celebration to your memory,
That you will not return to this world
Where steel is torn like paper from the earth
When I become a splinter in these winds?
The white winter light brands your initials
Across my eyelids, while the brilliant mahogany
Of your ringing footsteps echoes these karmic rustlings.
And the near exquisite lines
In your mother’s aging face,
Your cabinets glinting with fresh vegetables.
The ocean’s tongue spitting at your one window,
Are souvenirs that fall around my feet
Like the shards of sun
Shaken from the jagged tones of your hair.
It must get difficult,
All of this not wanting to die,
Harder than keeping up with the neighbors
Left prodding the twilight in fields
Already blended to the one color.
Yet your own eyes fishing in the dark
Will persist: Again and again,
The ace of your misfortunes
Has not entailed a loss of respect
For objects within your field of dignity
As you remain perched on your lopsided shore
Now almost fully slicked with the radiant solace
Descending as patiently as a wing upon you
You will persist,
And today I rinse myself completely
In your songs, in the passing time,
And leave you with your first two fingers
On the pulse of this late century.
And the disembodied thumb of the traveler
Who awaits you, in your new womb.