The Rest of Us

I'd always suspected the body was a dwelling,
a house that only children or the truly insane,
unafraid of returning to find doors barred against them,
enter and leave at will, that the rest

of us simply wait beneath the lintel of the threshold,
pondering the fields swept clean and polished
by the wind. And even though there are times
when the brave and the foolish among us step forward

to stand exposed beneath the sulk of sky,
we never go far; we simply look around a bit
before coming back in. Just to say we've been there.
But what of you, evicted

from the body by violence, snapped free of the flesh
for seventeen years only to return, lease in hand,
with rumors of heaven, which you remember
the way the rest of us remember childhood—

with great effort, out of sequence, one artifact
at a time: cuckoo spit, cat's eye, that perfect cleft
in the tip of a pen nib, the small, carved shields
of a pair of cufflinks. The empty mouths of buckles.

The shiny boat of a shoe. And all those years
you spent in a coma add up
to a separate, complete life: a slim boy of seventeen any girl
would love for his mystery and aura of exile. And yet

after all those years, after leaning
with your lips against the locked doors of your life
you can no longer walk but have acquired a new language.
And now when you speak I swear you are speaking

with your mouth against the lid
of a casket. And so, heaven is built: one
thick mouthful at a time. And, yes, I am bitter and resentful:
being mortal is payment enough. There should be no

extra charge to mistake this world for heaven;
but god, you now tell me, is a casual flame
burning about the trunk of each tree and under
the shelf of every leaf, and how

can I not think about Blake, who saw angels
bleating with fire in the trees and then lived his life
with the lord's bright body caught in his throat
like a hymn. There is no heaven;

only birds and wind. And your mind
flirting with its own absence. And the late-
blooming flowers sending out dark fleets of blossom.
Roger, I think one day you just

woke up and turned over, as we all do, to face the view:
outside, summer trees and the wink of visquene
and paper among the mute, busy mouths of the leaves;
small planes ascending from a distant airfield, scaling

and then slipping inside
the grip of the wind; that a strained
film of brightness was over all things, as if the world
were the hem of a long, pale robe caught

on a branch and pulled taut. That having been away
for so long, you mistook such things. There is no god;
just the limned and tooled body of the wind at play
among the plumes of the lilac; and trust me,

there's a warmth deep down in the grasses, right
where they enter the soil, and it will line your throat
like a hymn. Come, let me wheel
you out through the streets of the world,

where the rest of us live, where there are no angels;
only girls on every corner baring their beautiful limbs.