WEBVTT

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This is a poem that
has a much longer line.

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And it also has a
very long title.

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I think it's the longest
title I've ever written.

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It used to be the first line.

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And then it seemed to have
necessary information.

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But I didn't like the leap that
I had to make from that line

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into the second line.

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So I borrowed a
page from Tom Lux

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and just made it the
title of the poem.

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And the title is "High Winds
Flare Up and the Old House

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Shudders."

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So that's the title.

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"High Winds Flare Up and
the Old House Shudders."

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"The dead should just shut up.

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Already, they've ruined
the new-plowed field.

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It looks like a grave.

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Adjacent pine woods,
another set of walls.

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In that dark room, a birch,
too young to have a waist,

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practices sway and
bend, to slope and give.

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And the bee at vertical rest
on the outside pane, belly

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facing in, one jointed
limb crooked to its mouth.

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The mouth at work--

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my lost friend, of course, who
lifelong chewed his cuticles

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to the quick.

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Likewise, Jane, who calls from
her closet of walnut and silk

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for her widower to
stroke her breasts,

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her feet, although she has
no breasts, she has no feet.

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Exacting pity in
their big white bed.

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The dead themselves
are pitiless.

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They keen and thrash, or they
lodge in your throat like

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a stone, or they descend as
spring snow, as late light,

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as light-struck dust
rises and descends--

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frantic for more, more of
this earth, more of its flesh,

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more death.

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Oh, yes.

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And a few more thousand last
vast blue cloud-blemished

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skies.

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