Rest a book of his on the kitchen table, next
to your coffee cup topped with a touch of cream.
Turn on morning music and swallow
his words with each sip of breakfast blend.
Raise the curtains, and watch the golden
finches fly back and forth between long vines
in search of berries. Rest a book of his
on the kitchen table and open it with
the gentle grace of touching a child's face.
Remember, there is company in solitude,
and sometimes it's the loneness that fills
the space. Rest a book of his on the kitchen
table, and think of the cows drinking rainwater
across the meadow, and the sheep grazing
on high grass near the river, their bodies
warm as a mother's breast. Cry for the world's
willingness to ignore the unknown, know that your
weeping is heard by a sky teeming with stars.
Rest a book of his on the kitchen table,
and open it sweetly like the midnight
turndown of a coverlet on a forgiving bed-
exhaust yourself with memories of the dead
until your whole being is a living ghost
of all the people you've lost, your arms
weak from holding grief and a thousand
letters written on clouds through a stream
of sunlight, thin as a strand of hair-
tell your children you will always be there,
that you'll never leave, though leaving is certain
as suicide in silence, inevitable as men
turning away from love. Rest a book
of his on the kitchen table, and imagine
him reading The Untempered Soul.
Put your hand on the pages, and touch
the drums. Run your fingers through
unseen air in figure eights. Look up
existence in the dictionary-it will say
something that exists. Look up
nonexistence in the dictionary-it will
be there, in spite of its absence.
Rest a book of his on the kitchen table
because no one knows what it does between
readings, on days you've looked away,
abandoned your own heart in search
of another's- his book will be waiting
for the white windowed-light, opened,
and unopened, read, and unread,
whether you know it or not, until his poems
are part of you, have found their way home,
where they'll live and breathe, leave and enter
just as the golden finch carries on,
comes and goes, despite your absence