After Death

Roger Reeves | 131 To get the light and dead coming through The window without distinguishing one From the other is the day with and without Its mastery, stumbling upon a dead deer In a neighbor’s field, knowing it was left There for you not as muse but as memory Dropped, broken off. Death no longer concerned With this beast that once covered a field With the white breath of its longing Because the animal is beyond death, And death has no interest in what is beyond It, so now it’s off to stare at the barely-­ Standing-­ there Drunk swaying beneath two scythes Hanging on two boards above his raised eyes, The afternoon drifting into doorways, Death now in a pocket of pines, in the thick Hair of a boy who turns a skunk over With a stick, watching the Christmas of its intestines Steam in the snow. Death touching the boy Where it is he will know him—beneath the arm As if raising him up to this common Understanding. Desire is everywhere In this field, even in me who is not In this field but, from my many windows, Watching the night’s dark light fall and dwell In its falling which sends me stumbling To my newborn’s invisible breathing, Wanting to ensure the invisible Holds, my fig-­ branch finger stretched beneath her poetry After Death Roger Reeves 132 | Roger Reeves Nose, me wondering: what is beyond death? And what is this rage in darkness? And my father, what is he other than dead, Rage and so much light and so much light? ...