In my last years I swallowed
what I was supposed to,
drank not what was forbidden,
moved as I was advised to move,
and nevertheless ended up dead.

Can’t speak of what 
that’s like — there are contracts,
and it’s different for all anyway.
I’ll say this:
nothing about the passage itself

should terrify you.
It is as simple as changing
clothes, easy as a dressing room,
calm as a Saturday morning 
without mirrors, with nowhere to go.

That said, here are things to consider
before you cross over.  Kindness
to others, yes.  Taking stands
against preventable agony, yes.
Relating, loving, speaking passion,

of course.  But also,
there is a remarkable
emphasis here on whether or not
you occasionally stopped 
in the middle of the day to listen

to the day — to all of it
from truck snorts to humming bees.
You were expected to hear the world
as a symphony now and then;
they never tell us that soon enough.

So — go do that.  Go stop the moments
and sit with them.  It will prepare you
for much of what it’s like here — cannot
say more than that about it, except that
it’s not at all a bad existence.

It’s nothing like life to be dead.  
There’s more singing, if you can believe 
that.  There’s also more silence. You
are always comfortable.  You 
are always fine — it’s going to be fine.

The stink
draws from you
a cry of “my goodness”

for the whale
of a whale carcass
stranded on the beach.

You call out for goodness
as if it were perfume
against stink.

You call out “my goodness”
as if it would help
at this point,

as if death
were opposed
to goodness,

as if goodness
could deodorize
death.

What you call for
doesn’t matter now
to the whale, or course,

but it’s all you have
to reach for
in this life where

we say
cleanliness
is next to something

we see as akin to goodness,
and stink and decay
signal evil.

My goodness — with this
attitude, you and I will never know
the other half of the world —

the half that stinks,
the half that lets us down,
the half we cannot avoid;

and if we killed the whale somehow,
don’t we need
to set our own goodness aside

and breathe in
what we’ve done
if anything is to change?

study these maps
and atlases

find aerial views of
our current herds
of obscurantists

lose the shock and awe
and welcome to what passes
for us:

a faked enthusiasm
for intelligence
that skips over intersecting complexities
and human behavioral understanding
in favor of  belief in
Illuminati

when did we get so scared

when did we surrender
the spirit of Chautauqua

to rutting and beating our way
across information
toward specious theories
simply to excuse ourselves
from actual thought
from being pressed to action

what was in our hands once
we handed away to high and mighty
heirs apparent and
we lose and lose and are lost

maps and atlases
only help so much
the GPS device dumbs us

no more spoonfeeding
look up hard words
and then we have to talk to one another again
learn to read a landscape
strip myth from our eyes
start walking

with a glint and a purpose
and pitchforks
always pitchforks
if we can find them

if we can even recognize them

look it up

Quick-draw heart,
an ever-overwrought gun
set to rock and roll
when triggered.

Small thermonuclear
mouth, hardwired to blow
when coupled with
strategic command ears.

Hands, not as deadly
but as willing to bash and bang
as the rest.  Eyes, tossers
of darts and daggers.

I’m an armory waiting
to be raided.  Waiting
to be looted and then have
my weapons turned against me.

With one last favorite potion 
downed in a gulp, he’s out.
There will be
nothing more to say
about him today.

When he awakes he will 
be, or will claim to be, “a new man.”
Fresh page, clean start,
new leaf turned.  There’s
a theory for your consideration —

that anyone of that age
as dark and crusty as he is
could be new in any way
after one hard brown drink
and one hard night’s sleep. 

But his eyes are wide open now, he says,
he’s apologizing for all he’s worth,
for last night, for yesterday,
for every day before this morning.
His face is bright, his voice is sad.

You still bear his bruises, but they are fading.
He has been asleep for a very long time
and is awake, contrite, seems ready to be better.
It’s not like you can’t go along with this, hoping
against history. You can, certainly.

“After all is said and done, much more
is said than done.” Your mother
used to say that, often.  
Not sure where she got it
except through experience.

He says his eyes 
are wide open now.  He says
baby, please, I’m sorry, I’ll never, 
I’m a changed man. It’s all been said.
It’s all been done.  It’s done. Done.

Whenever I say
“finally,”
or
“glad that’s over,”

I know myself
to be a liar, somehow;
nothing has ever been
over, “finally” 
has never been true.

I live in a circle
with childhood
biting my tail always,
with yesterday seeking
to tear at my belly.

I ought to learn to nod
at apparent closure
more subtly
and never
commit a word to it.
I ought to know
by now
the only true way
it’s going to end
is by it all ending at once.

Compulsively
telling people about
a death in the family
about which I feel little,
it dawns upon me
that we somehow
miss village life,

even those of us
who were born and grew up
in the Megalopolis;
behind our need to reach
for the keyboard or touchscreen
and proclaim everything

is the stark truth
that in our bones
we miss
and strive to replace
the Town Crier
we have never had.

A sudden sense of 
the breadth of night.

A scale
vast enough
to take its true measure
would encompass
all the possible
that is possible.

I have seen this 
before. I swear
my eyes held it
forever when I was 
two, when I was three,
before I was schooled away
from belief, vagaries,
and wonder.

Now
I don’t know
what to call it.
Then
it did not need to be called,

it simply was there,
and I was small before it,
and had no voice, and was
consumed, and content.