Three Poems

if you have a choice
don’t visit the body.
it will only confuse
what you know
with the inconceivable.

the body
third in a trinity of things
her, her objects, and the body.

the skin will be slack
expressions strange, foreign, disturbing.
assault
on an already fragile vision of
the broken thing
the missing thing.

i believed in the unity of things
body, mind, spirit.

the body
i wish it disappeared instantly
going where you go.

the body
what is it now?
the third thing
the hideous thing.

if you have a choice
don’t view the body.

the absence of things
--no refrigerator overflowing
--no one napping on the couch
--no cigarettes in the ashtray.

the presence of things
--running shoes abandoned in the bathroom
--reading glasses left by the phone
--a wool hat in the back seat.

you think there are days I don’t remember.
memory is three hard stones in my gullet
one green serpentine
a white bone fragment
a black piece of obsidian.
stones grinding life into dust
the way birds do.

memory is a darkness at the edge of vision
a rottenness at the heart of things
an irrevocable, irreconcilable, inconceivable act.

there are affronts.
the russet stupidity of cows
standing with big hooves in the stream
the blank innocence of deer, given with a glance
as they bound across the road at the edge of Berryessa.

the quail remind me
it is in their hurried movements
anxious glances
so many warning calls.

I wonder how it will all end.
how the missing becomes a part of what is left
how the darkness becomes hidden
and the gullet finally softens.

scent of oranges
incense in the drapes
palatial white wooden funeral home
on the hill, built in 1861
two strings of wampum, the black ones
grey skies but no rain
so many flowers