Poetry

the last surviving member
of Heaven’s Gate
reflects on failure
I thought you were
coming back
had wrapped up
everything
was ready
to be taken away

there’s something happening that I can’t quite
catch. something hiding, birthing,
like the egg of a maggot, itching
to hatch, quite slight—
barely there—

Once again, to the shore
pebbles and plastic wrappers
in-drawing, withdrawing breath of wind,
that slow moaning of foghorns:
our common humanity washed up,
yet again.

I swerve when I hear the doctor’s words,
the news of her 26 cancerous lymph nodes
crosses the line and veers into my lane
the impact like an oncoming car

I’m sitting across from a watery-eyed man with a tight-lipped smile—
there’s a faded ink stain on the cuff of his painfully white dress shirt,
and his glasses don’t quite sit right on his face.
I tell him about the time I stuck my fingers around a candle wick,

every day at edge of the wood
i turn and take that same trail
down past the large pines
through thicket and sedge
where very little light gets through