May I

    When the Hour Pushed Ahead   Yes, the long shadows go out from the bales; and yes, the soul must part from the body: what else could it do?                           Jane Kenyon                         Twilight: After Haying   A pint of blood, I know, I know it is not the same losing a son the way you did & losing a son the way I did.  The undoneness of it.  The gone body.  How he is   wheeled to his last rooms, how he will be cooling precisely, to remove a heart a pancreas his kidneys . . .each to their now different destiny, a new haven.  They will when not in his skin when in the skin of others some boys some men some girls some women   split them...

  The True Sound of A Scythe   It’s true we can drown in waves of pity, their height & ferocity lent by the squall only shock can breed.   The gape-mouth.   The abrupt letting off, being struck like this, of the tension’s stretched heft, an imagined heaviness of the block & tackle we’ve all been all our lives bracing our weight against.   The rope like to burn the life line completely away from our palms so that later when we’re comparing scars we’ll only be able to call to mind the one and only one it all happened to, the one who now is losing it all, who stood in the cove watching something massively tidal approach them & like all shocked dumb beasts they can only do so much of the taking it all in: the water, the cloud, the oh Sweet Jesus blow out all at once let go A wind driven by the local expert Grim To pluck such freshets rootless Where they stood when the news Shook them, shook them a...