The other thing I share with this class
today is that since I can't come up
with any of the titles on my own,
I also just take them from music.
So there's a song called "If You Go Away," and surprisingly,
this poem is called "If You Go Away."
In fact, the whole book is named after a song,
but we'll get to that.
"If You Go Away."
"When death finds me if there'd be sight at all,
let me see as the torn coyote does, turning its head briefly,
looking not with understanding but recognition that where
the flesh falls open around a wound that more resembles
the marsh violets' petals, that hard-to-detect
at first darkening that happens soft,
steadily toward the flower's throat.
Why not let go of it, I used to think,
meaning that instinct by which the body shields itself
from what threatens it unexpectedly.
A fist, the next so-called unbearable question
that's bearable after all.
Voila.
Surprise.
I know death's an abstraction, but I prefer a shape to things,
though the shapes are changeable.
In my latest version, death is a young man with a habit
for using one side of his mouth to blow his hair slightly up
from his brow while with the other half he mutters things
like, 'Each time I leave it's like I've left forever.'
Behind him, stray cabbage moths lifting up
from catalpas blossoms make it seem as if one bloom had flown
free from the others, fluttering mirror
from a clutch of still ones.
There's a kind of love that doesn't extend itself
both ways between two people equally
because it doesn't have to."