This is a poem that has a much longer line.
And it also has a very long title.
I think it's the longest title I've ever written.
It used to be the first line.
And then it seemed to have necessary information.
But I didn't like the leap that I had to make from that line
into the second line.
So I borrowed a page from Tom Lux
and just made it the title of the poem.
And the title is "High Winds Flare Up and the Old House
Shudders."
So that's the title.
"High Winds Flare Up and the Old House Shudders."
"The dead should just shut up.
Already, they've ruined the new-plowed field.
It looks like a grave.
Adjacent pine woods, another set of walls.
In that dark room, a birch, too young to have a waist,
practices sway and bend, to slope and give.
And the bee at vertical rest on the outside pane, belly
facing in, one jointed limb crooked to its mouth.
The mouth at work--
my lost friend, of course, who lifelong chewed his cuticles
to the quick.
Likewise, Jane, who calls from her closet of walnut and silk
for her widower to stroke her breasts,
her feet, although she has no breasts, she has no feet.
Exacting pity in their big white bed.
The dead themselves are pitiless.
They keen and thrash, or they lodge in your throat like
a stone, or they descend as spring snow, as late light,
as light-struck dust rises and descends--
frantic for more, more of this earth, more of its flesh,
more death.
Oh, yes.
And a few more thousand last vast blue cloud-blemished
skies.