After a Suicide
Taking with you some memory of the crabapples.
Of London and the cemetery fog. You
in a corner of the room, looking out
the bay window with all the nearly-
blue light on your face. Did you hear it
when it came, the breath most precious
for being last? Before it pressed
slowly out and through the groove
of the keyhole. Out onto the lawn,
like a hand of flute music stirring
the carcass of a bee. Is it so terrible
finally? Or as they say: all pomegranates
and ferrymen, the strict bloodless moon
each day on the underground lake,
afterlife in the darkness of tubers.
Are you cracking jokes now
on your sad long way to Mt. Katahdin?
But perhaps you are born already,
a gloved hand pulling you out
fresh and sinewed as a newly-bit
nectarine, your pink butt smacked
hard as all the air and death bends
into a boy. What is there left to do now
but thank you. Thank you for ever
giving me to you. Thank you for dying on time.
