The Law of Falling Bodies: Poems

For Helen, in Her Absence

For Helen, in Her Absence The house seems so quiet now, now that you’re dead. I almost feel more fear Than grief, something ancient and naked in the dark. I still talk to you all day, under my skull Or in my open voice. It keeps me close. It keeps me breathing when I want to stop. I’ve barely begun to pick through all you left behind— The white sweater, the emerald ring, Loose photographs and votive lights in the bottom drawer. On the square you knitted from the royal colors of Mardi Gras, Purple, green, and gold, I place the urn, a solid bronze, heavy even before your ashes. Where we come from, a thousand hot miles from here, There’s dust of sassafras Over the gumbo, and in every courtyard a ghost. I dawdle among the certificates and the sympathy cards. It’s been raining for hours, And the muddy daffodils lay down their heads in the slop. So the days go down in cold degrees, and I feel the years Catching up with themselves, Shadow after shadow trailing their long desires and remorse. I take my aching spine upstairs, step by slow step, To the dead bedroom. Steady, old man. It’s hard now anywhere you fall. 77 • • • ...