The Law of Falling Bodies: Poems

Song with One Lung

Song with One Lung The wind sprawls in a hurry of snow Over the graves of tulip and hyacinth. Six months ago, I dug six inches down And put them in and turned the light out. What hope now to bring them back but April? The cold makes my scars ache. Bleak sun, Stars hard enough to crack the sky, zero At noon and in the granite hours after, Where the weeds blow like scrawny flags. This season of Euclid and the bare brain, Even a priest of the sweet impossible Doesn’t have a prayer. All I can see Are my dead behind me and my death ahead. Like frozen ink on a frozen page, the pent-up dark Stays in place, a clot of lampblack and kerosene. On what feels like the eve of evil, we need A stock of rock salt to halt the tides of ice And a new Prometheus to redeem the flame. Let me crank the furnace and the stereo To a higher power and wake my veins With the sting of gin. In this resistant night, There must be somewhere the first slow push 35 • • • Of sleepy sap, and I want to be there when it Rises to the red of rhododendrons, to azaleas That pink the spring, when my exhausted blood Will flow again, fresh as the wet light of rain. • • • 36 ...