"All Hallows' Eve."
"I didn't ask Elizabeth why she adjusted the decorative gourd
on the top shelf as she left the lecture hall.
What I can tell you is this.
She stopped as if someone called to her, and this,
that her son two months ago caught
a cold, that he was 27 living in Portland, or was it Seattle?
A cold.
By now you can probably guess the cold didn't lift.
His lungs began to flood with water his body kept making.
This flood did not draw back, overtook her,
took him down back through her own body,
preempting the luxury of annoyances
he had reigned over her.
The small reversible hazards from within whose gentle
arc he would return, instructed in increments so slight
as to go unnoticed by him, but whose accumulated
graces she would detect each time she saw him.
No, it can't be the case that she
paused to move the holiday squash one-quarter
inch, pressed her open palm against it,
leaving it flush with the molding
rather than just over its edge in order
that for these last two weeks James could be
in a distant city breathing."