I Think Grief Maybe Doesn't It Starts Like This:

I Think Grief

               

Maybe—Doesn’t It?—

Starts Like This:

Suppose you leave today

Suppose you take all your own

                music and sit-

                                                uate it

in the speakers

of your car loud

Suppose you sweat leaving

the driveway but don’t look

back not even for that

perpetual

                                last

                                                check

perhaps

or Suppose worse you don’t stop on your way

                out don’t even look

or maybe Suppose

you can’t see me or find time for me the time

                a brief rendezvous:

                                I told you they were showing

                                Thoreau not far from here I wanted

                                to take you the last time

                                I called you from Walden

                                                holding you

                                                in the phone

                                                beside an old cairn Whitman wrote

                                                about, setting stones

                                                when he stood here

                                I called you

                                                mud on my shoes

                                                I’d slipped in the marsh

                                                across from the pond

                                                and then taken it all       

                                                back home

                                                with me:

where he walked...

and suppose you went too

                                anyway I’m afraid

maybe

                you are too far away now Suppose suppose

just suppose

you’re supposed to leave today

Suppose you stay

one more day waiting

the snow the wet heavy snow-- Listen it’s just one day
into Fall--the snow

is still

months away