Body, an Elegy
              Suddenly the body says night.
                             Cyrus Cassells

The body is not
an insomniac, some
twilight sleepless walker.
It turns to lie down
as it pleases, at times
against your will.

The body chooses
its separate departures
to backrooms of the house.
Goodnight heel, boomerang
of bone and tendons.
Goodnight feet, arch-less
pestle-crush of earth.

The doctors come
to chop you down
and cover you with strips
of white linen. See,
your legs, your trunks
of redwoods stripped
of their flesh bark
are endangered. Goodnight
kidney, fallen already
to a deep coma,
needing machines to eat
and drink. For it,
there is no waking.

Your left arm long
retired and under the
sheets. Uncle, lay
your perfect right
that never knew shunt
or needle, lay it down
so the I.V. can land. Together,
we say goodnight to the heart
that has failed you once.

But the eyes, they refuse.
Your mouth does not
wish to go so soon. So
speak your farewells, Uncle.
Speak your hundred more
farewells. Watch this holy
body of birds flap
across your window.

Inheritance
             after Lucille Clifton


Frequented in dreams
by fresh-dead loves, so I have seen
with these eyes the eyes of a spirit
who's crossed, seen the body reject
its coffin bed and climb right out
onto the church's plank floor
seen the dove at the bed's foot
calling out all names, or the red eyes
of the flesh, abandoned. Do not say
I should be grateful for perfect eyes
or their ability to see such distances.
Say I should be grateful for sight,
for open and shut.


No Longer Ashamed

In the daylight, under the open glare
of the unshaded bulb in your apartment,

I straddle your lap. It is hot for February.
Down to tank top and bare feet you brush

your hand against my forearms, shoulders,
chest. Despite desire, I am a stone statue

in the garden. The only times we've come
to this place is under the cloak of night—

oh inscrutable night I bloom under
without pause, without question, confident

in my invisibility. You reach with cupped hand
to a breast as if to hold water. You ask
if you could see me. I am a small sip falling

 

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