January 21st: For A 23rd Birthday

January 21st: For a 23rd Birthday

The first day after a death, the new absence

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind

While there is still time.

                                                Philip Larkin

                                                The Mower

 If I come back

like the Buddhists

say we do if all

my eyes of sight

and sound of mouth

and obviously

touch of hand if

all those lost boys

I orphaned when

I slept come back

and find the window

open will I know

what I left is not

the girl on the bed

but a copy of her

and truer a copy

of a copy of a copy

all those gone years

beyond heard word gurgle

or felt touch all those

little moths cluttering

the steps under

the night-burning light

expired and I step

through them and

their dust’s on me

and my shoes but

I do I step through

oh God how many

waited at that warm

too warm light and died

and others took it up

the wait a legend now

a vigil so that by the time

my great granddaughter

is old and I return

the way Buddhists

return through the skin

of other lives

and I’m feeling

a pulse fading

in the wrist in the neck

I tell you when I feel,

feel!  I’ve seen

this woman before

or heard a clock

and a brief wind

grunt and growl

of every one of the

lives of my heart

it’s absolute it’s true

me, me, another me

precise little me in

a pair of different soles

and a billion billion

billion billion billion

breaths ago maybe more

it’s so felt:  a woman once

let go of my mouth

(I won’t be afraid I say

but I am) I’d gone out

in a boat

with the other kids

and somehow

it sunk and that’s all

in my next dozen

or more lives I recall

the most I can’t

say how I do or why

before the veins lay still

in the muscle and bone

and I know but don’t

as I turn to go and brief

the moths white this

time but don’t ask me

how I know

or how they follow me

toward home

I don’t know I’ve never

known dying is this

dying?