OK, this one, and then I'll finish up.
What did it matter their names were flames?
It is nice to be dead like this from grace.
Glass door cracked open for a breeze.
Crows unrolling October's paper curtain.
A scroll across the meadows, lunar slopes for off season,
aeriform alphabets.
I want to lie down in the road and read
the gold-fringed leaves of an autumn diction,
yet stand between my two selves, paralyzed.
Accounting to do, cooking, and email.
Must write the girls to thank them for the wine,
study the dictionary of angels.
What does it matter?
Their names are flames, and my mind hurts all night
terrorizing its survivors.
Each thief of thought a phantom word whose oculi stalk me
through every eye.
The crush of people at the departure terminal pleading
to their gods for the ship that never comes still haunts me.
Stripped of their belongings, they climbed.
Limb over limb skywards.
The words on their tongues no nearer
the stars or the circling birds.
A lighthouse beacon flashes through my window.
The end for some is the body no longer
being burdened to believe.
For me, this is where I begin.
I take up my pen in the frigid house.
A pile of feathered bones at the door.
Last year's bears asleep beneath the floorboards.