What do you dream about, blind man? Voices
coming from below the ground, long canes,
longer than the world is deep?
Do you imagine you have experienced sight,
a great salty yawn spilling cracked oysters,
each unique odorous texture a vision?
I wish you would wake and tell me your dreams,
in words sufficient enough to remove my vision,
forever in the way of what you see.
Four years old — allowed
to wander the length of the dock
to the end, where I was,
a stranger in blue
looking across the water
waiting for something—a twinge
against the tightness of green
braided line extending in-
to the slippery heavy.
I saw him before, the day he fell
hard on the planks, tripped on his own
dog. He sat down beside me
until he heard his mother
from the shore, hollering,
“come now, Joshua, now before the rain
catches you.” He stood, too close,
the way kids do sometimes, asking,
“You remember the day I fell
right here?” pointing
the smallness of his fingers
to a scar leftover on his chin.
“My dad left that day. He said
he’ll be back in three days.
How long is three days?
Nobody will tell me.”
Annie Lebawits shot him,
Jagger shirtless—elevated
from man to Rolling Stone.
If he were any other man
we’d say he looks skeletal
today, but he’s still going,
doing it, with his lips
pressed out, Tumbling Dice.
He is as Annie showed us,
frozen in time, shirtless
forever singing Wild Horses.
Thirst lifted her feet
across the man-made border
breaking the saddle
north toward Los Angeles
under the same starry sky
Rainwater is collected
in golden bowls,
each a mirror reflecting the bad
haircuts worn by monks.
They are chanters
never worrying about the next meal.
Tell us how to pray
for bread to feed our trusting children,
you who chant
with the assurance that the gong chimes
dinner at seven.
in cars,
on trains—a hundred times
each day. He gets off
at any number of stops
and people never know it
but they just missed him—
by a moment,
a moment when a streetlight malfunctions,
a moment when the breaks fail,
a moment when the wheels fall off,
if they only knew,
how a moment could change it all—
any moment, everyday. Death
is biding his time,
going about his business.
He presses
his oilskin jacket, morning,
night, when it wrinkles
a little—always looking
grand when he takes you.
Death has no mustache to twirl,
no vocal chords to cackle,
no eyes with which to stare.
His bones are not fleshy and
he is diminished
by what
he lacks—nerves,
missing, heart-
less, like a machine is less
than a man, than a mouse,
than any living thing.
Death drifts an inch
off the ground,
sometimes flying first
class, sometimes lifting off
with a shuttle, leaving the earth.
Death is just
death, without fanfare
without rockets,
without special effects.
Death travels like we do,
never needing a ticket to ride,
sure, stoic, often wanting more leg room.
The bus stops at the hospital.
Inside a hundred bowls of Jello
shake and quiver
as he picks over them. People in storage,
wait in each room—little
parking spaces, waiting
for him. Easy enough,
he separates
the bodies from the cocoons, fruit
from the pits—his scythe falls,
driving with precision—often with a rattle.
He lingers—sometimes silently passing
by,
by moments,
by mere moments.