The Mission

         across the street from a home

for funerals—afternoons

         I’d look out the shades

& think of the graveyard

         behind Emily Dickinson’s house—

how death was no

         concept, but soul

after soul she watched pour

         into the cold

New England ground.

         Maybe it was the sun

of the Mission,

         maybe just being

more young, but it was less

         disquiet than comfort

days the street filled with cars

         for a wake—

children played tag

         out front, while the bodies

snuck in the back. The only hint

         of death those clusters

of cars, lights low

         as talk, idling dark

as the secondhand suits

         that fathers, or sons

now orphans, had rescued

         out of closets, praying

they still fit. Most did. Most

         laughed despite

themselves, shook

         hands & grew hungry

out of habit, evening

         coming on, again—

the home’s clock, broke

         like a bone, always

read three. Mornings or dead

         of night, I wondered

who slept there & wrote letters

         I later forgot

I sent my father, now find buoyed up

         among the untidy

tide of his belongings.

         He kept everything

but alive. I have come to know

         sorrow’s

not noun

         but verb, something

that, unlike living,

         by doing right

you do less of. The sun

         is too bright.

Your eyes

         adjust, become

like the night. Hands

         covering the face—

its numbers dark

         & unmoving, unlike

the cars that fill & start

         to edge out, quiet

cortège, crawling, half dim, till

         I could not see to see—