Stop Shaking

              Not the bell, I said—one of us did;

Not the bell, but the smaller sounds, barely noticeable,

trapped inside it. It seemed the kind of thing I might say

to remind myself, when I’ve forgotten again, what I want

to believe, even now, matters most—precision; though it’s hard,

these days, to know for sure what’s true. Isn’t every season,

no matter what we call it, shadow season? Didn’t timothy

use to mean a meadow—a common name, back then at least,

for the sweetest grass? I keep making the same avoidable

few mistakes that I’ve always made, and then regretting them,

and then regretting them less. Think of all the suffering

happening everywhere, all the time, for nothing.

What if memory’s just the dead, flourishing differently

             from how they flourished alive?