Walking Past Midnight

He runs ahead into the night.
The bodiless phosphorescence--
reflection of countless tiny stars
falling--covers the ground in light.

I follow dark stars in the snow
to an open field beyond trees;
we two, the only living beings
in sight. The unlit houses bare
faceless mirrors staring back.

Reluctantly, I yell for him, afraid 
I will awaken sleepers. We run,

instinctively, to the back door,
shaking the snow from our bodies.
Foot and paw prints disappearing,
a moment's presence buried.

in this mourning of the afternoon

still shining today

the stars of last night

traces on my hands

i am what has gone 

before the first storm

the thought in love

with itself

all the little things of love i never told her

in the kitchen   i'm still a boy   listening to women
lipstick scrawled on the bedroom     mirror
cigarettes burning in ashtrays      unanswered 

phone
he sings a love song            to no one
a sickle moon cuts through           the dark to the other side

for each forgotten "thing" a crow screams 
dead black leaves fall into my pacing   piling up
full moon         so much to be said in the silence

deer licking a salt block in slow fat strokes
sullen stranger at my back door you take my yellow breath 
away      low tide            all my sins revealed

left-handed i write upside down scuttling across the sea floor
footprints still trying to get there       long after I've gone
he talks about the weather     geese overheard

cutting my white hair in a hospital room 
snow            drifting on the widowsill
a single red leaf follows me everywhere

it wants to tell me more about autumn   he says i must
fall asleep on the ground as long as it takes 
the cold will give me answers 

dearest me

the story's getting around
there's no stopping it
a cicada is telling it all night long
in thousands of trees

just when you think it couldn't get any worse
there's more
the candles are in puddles
their wicks dead flies
cold and hard like the last dinner of a dying man

dead dead dead his mantra from the grave
something no one can know
when silence can be found in lint
from the crevices of souls

The Bridge My Brother Crossed

My father drove across the bridge

many times, back and forth, stopped,

stood in the middle of the highway

at the foot of black skid marks

trailing into a weed-filled ditch.
Cars passed with staring drivers

slowing for a crazy man.