Death Tractates

Split Tractate

Split Tractate But I feared that her soul didn't miss me. Didn't miss spring. That she was preoccupied , like a tourist, maybe not moving around in the mind of god but in the onyx market, which was the exact same thing— Help, mockingbird! don't sayno! Maybe she has forgotten us, she has given us this priceless gift, she has let us go. I looked for her in anger, behind sunsets, along the iron tracks of the personal; I looked for her in planes of agony and she was quite close by. They said I had to let go of her. She said so too. Let go she said from the What. The screen between me and her. But still I held on; holding on is my specialty. I held on to her image, to the moment of death, to the problem with pronouns; maybe I'd learn. Spring could let go couldn't it. Vireos hung upside down from the cottonwood. The old calm towhee at the feeder—it did not tarry. 29 Beautiful, average mornings: the scattered actual: grief changed them only slightly. Mornings waiting for the triple A, of neighbors standing by their cars and chatting, one pink klecnex in the street—or is it a camelia— then a man climbs up the shining ladder to a phone pole, takes the spool of insulated wire and threads it— Where? To the heaven of messy souls behind the bright new consciousness or to the old Baptist heaven with its silverware— so many heavens! Which was she in. I wished she'd speak more clearly when I asked her who was noticing her now. What was "this" to her. And the mockingbird stayed all morning with its row of checkmarks and the verse that sounded like teacher-teacher-teacher police! police! Maybe that bird was her— so versatile; it did not cling— let go said the What. Let go said everything Sweet afternoons of exhaustion. Trips to the library with the other moms. Taking the books 30 to the chrome mouth of the book deposit and hesitating before letting the slender paperback slide down on its very own bardo journey; Maybe I should have warned it not to attach itself to its travels, not to identify with the suffering, that is the main thing. What is this so-called death anyway. Fat chickadees hop up the "dead" fennel. A little cowlick sprouts from the 'dead' place in the pine. Petals die and in a day, what looks like mascara brushes fall from the birthday tulips. Is the falling or are the tulips it. What is this so-called death what is it. Let go said the so-called What. Let go said everything. Even the poem said it. Said it would come in its own good time as I leaned forward to see death's face though there was always this gap between my hand and the page, 3i I had only to trace the pen over the words; the poem was already writtcn32 ...