Death visits you
in the face of your father.
He calls you
to his curious room
and reaches out a hand.
He has called you for a reason
and you want to cry, want to see
what the reason is.
*
In the long afterward
the dead have obligations.
You see them less and less,
like your very first friend,
like your parents in the years after leaving home.
*
Dreams are the borrowed eyes of the dead.
They come down to you
in old poses, faces resplendent:
you dream, and dream and dream
until they are certain you see.
*
The dead are like the soul
of a man while he’s singing.
They are clear escaping
nights, wandering and cool.
They are not breath; they have given that up.
Not breath. But everything else.
~ from What Kind of Man Are You (Brick Books, 2018)
