the door is open
like the night outside
I’ll stand to walk

is what they call the newly dead,
(absence of air
does this). What they call dread

Their song is almost painful the way it
penetrates the air—above the haze and
level of the fields a thin line drawn. A

The branch of stream and law entwine
lost rail to the stars and back again
while the dandelion sits on a weed

Jigsaw puzzle is pieced together:
             out steps a flute player.

Script in hand 
         Stands revealed in Awesome Splendor.

Month of the least death poetry, 
I pity you: a bone of a day 
once every four years tossed your way. 

If she faints while in her fast, the chef awaits
her word in a kitchen hidden at the heart
of the hotel. Her hunger, his counterpart,

It need not be a desiccated wreck 
of boards, completely uninhabited, 
adobe bricks regressed to mud, hay. Heck,

Any tree would seem to grieve,
what with the hawk lonelinessing
on her desiccated perch.