The Wake

How large might I say forever is from here?
How starred might the blank night be without us?

When I last looked back at the river I felt its weeds at my ankles and knees.
When I took up the dim waters in my hands I feigned that interest;

So, with that in mind, I demand to know where the indelible never is now?
Is this all you’ll tell me, from the bottom rung of a very high ladder: How now?

How might the air breathe, how might the pine break, or the mud lift?—
The birch marks the cardinal in the crush, white on a color like that. The snow.

How early the rabbits are out eating things from around the edge of car tires and trash bins.
How early and habitual they are in the evening sitting still for hours as if they didn’t exist, lumps long across the lawns.

How large might I say a skied forever is from here when all that I see is blue?
Remember that question: How far is up? Every image I’ve seen backdrops the planet in black, untranslatably distant.

So: How now? Lima bean lines of twilight twill the skyscrapers; leaves and nothing but a cloud-climbing sky break into that unbreathable distance. Trees grow to it.

I’ll pass, cool and catty cashmere women in the coffee shops, with their hairpin noses and music-shoes’ beautiful.
How light does it get much later than this?—because it’s soon to be dark.

And dark means the day is ending.

For Crystal