"The Last Letter Home."
Out of the dark window, I see an older man in miniature,
squealing beyond each frightening and specific
death--
that's me or that's you death, fading into the future
I am questioning.
I pick the pen up and put it down and pick it up again.
The process takes years of passion and refusal,
so we never sleep.
It's raining here in Iowa, the mountains in Arizona, now
Oregon, and the hate grows out of our heads like hair
from a corpse.
The landscape bends so far I can't see you anymore.
This is the poem of the sun, trapped
like a ray of bad light--
guilt, which I take to mean this constant talking.
I would like to understand the restrictions you impose on me.
The same nose, the same eyes which turn inward like anxiety
and be free.
The generations of worms, which I constantly
discover are real as I grow older keep reciting,
it's no use, love him.
It's easy.
It's biblical.
Forgive me if I fail.
When I write these letters, it's me
I hate, confessing similitude.
So if you die before the next last letter home,
beekeeper of the only trust we've known--
memory.
And I will take your name.
It will be like learning to be ridiculous all over again.
The comical dwarf unsteady on his feet, the dumb loneliness
sucking at his chest.