Thinking death

“…my father, whose life
was spent like this,
thinking of death, to the exclusion
of other sensual matters,
so in the end that life
was easy to give up, since
it contained nothing.
— From Mirror Image, by Louise Glück”

 

we see our poetry’s death in a recess,
a  little black bird on our clothesline
that has come away from dark night.

poetry’s death resides in our balcony
and works  out to  nothing in pocket
and behind shirt pockets of nothing.

we have little black bird’s lonely night
on a clothesline with our single sock,
the other being body dropped to floor.

the body that thinks death all its life
away from sensual things and grapes
and women and poems and rainbows.

when body drops body loses nothing,
the sensual things, women in grapes
rainbows, red velvety insects of  rain.