Leaving Behind

                         1

Open up for close

out    soul-clothes    every-

thing has to go    closing

down time    call them all

saints    souls    my own gone

ones:  Andy    Marcia    Mary Alice

Mary Anne     cloud of all    carried out

 

outside my window: locust, cloth

of gold     on the ground: its yellow

tabs   linden hearts   sweetgum stars

like cut-outs from the same ...    

paper-napkin ghosts in a tree near

the house where a year ago my friend — 

rust-colored chrysanthemums   rust-colored door

 

door to door the angel no the Lord

passed or did not pass — 

the angel opened the prison

door     doors to pass through, out

or in:  our millions, more than any — 

in the other story the Lord

said:  to put a difference between

 

between one and another

a gun:  at one end it’s a good

gun because at the other’s a cell

phone pill bottle toy gun nothing a

Trayvon    Tamir    Dontre    Michael

Laquan    Eric    Rekia    John:    call

them out and the others, black and many

 

many thousand gone    no

more auction block    slaves gone

up north where I am going

again, coppery oak leaves holding

on, overlaid with gold, then just rust

above the skeletal gray ...    

chains gone, or gone before, more — 

 

more new neighbors residing

on these avenues:  thousands in white

marble:  whitman harvey harris bliss — 

past yellowing birch and weeping beech

at the intersection of  Larch and Oak

whitney spencer jewell:  a startle

of Japanese maple spreading red

 

red shadow on pale

moon:  earth curtain

drawn slowly across

quarter half  almost

across:  weeks ago, weeks

of  my small life, child-

sized life so little left

 

left them there

mother   father

left leaving their living

their death-days:

his Labor, her June

yellow circles of  leaves beneath — 

something left behind

 

behind all that is

is not    God:  still, small

silence of    not beyond

beneath before but

no    where    name

blue sky gray

cloud that is   not there

 

There was a road, long,

gray, with dotted line — 

wanted to write

old, I thought years ago

young, and here it is: road

running out, gold gone

now, cut here   cut to old

 

old vets:  in 2012 the last

from the First, the Great, the war

to end all wars, its Armistice honored

the cause of world peace but there was

the Second, not even a million left and now

it’s all Veterans, suicides, homeless, parades

rained on today, our post-traumatic war

 

wars now, ten to watch:  Syria/ISIS

Ukraine S. Sudan Nigeria Congo Afghanistan

while the faithful debate: turn the other or

uniformed Christ with gun, as in the First — 

while boys spill toy soldiers, khaki and green

with tanks and guns, from a plastic tub — 

while leaves dry to khaki on our ground

 

ground covered with oak leaves, crisp

and tan, and others under, crushed

into brown, soon to be earth — 

but sun still lighting the threadleaf

Japanese maples apricot plum

sun still paling my pink-tinged skin

blood showing through my thinned

 

thinned to spindly twigs with dangles

of pods the once-gold locust — 

thinner the ice and higher the seas

and hotter the planet and what will be done

at the Paris talks to slow it   Paris

where last night terrorists killed and Beirut — 

to stop the killing the dying earth    to turn

 

turn on red    stop

light to go    light

touch    blood    love

light    wrote mind-

field for    mine-    it’s

a gold    mine    rising

into light    field to go

 

go with me, my love, my one

into that night where one will go

before the other but still our night

boat our bed    our lovers’ tongues

songs in the night    nor the moon

by night    our little light    night-

night my love    by and by

 

by order of    no exit except

the angel troubled the pool but

stubble before the wind just

two apples left on this tree — 

cloud from clūd, rock, but

the stars we see are not stars but

light    but cloud over light

 

lights out wars on last

days end times reckoning left

behind but which us them not one

stone upon another nation against

mirror terror Jesus Isa no one knows but

hurry it up faster let climate also be

a sign beginning of sorrows

 

sorrow sorrow my friend’s last bed

just five months after they said he ...    

behind the rust-colored door

brown brown all leaves on the ground

requiem aeternam we sang together

year years all tumbled down

et lux perpetua     light

 

light of sun on sweetgum leaves

glisten of amber and green or

sudden light of gunfire, bombs:

Nigeria now: two girls, one

eleven, strapped into suicide

vests, and Mali, the world

lit with the light of darkness

 

darkness He called ... or darkness

we make, denying the fallen among,

the recent threatened tortured escaped:

send them back send them to camps

close down their mosques let only

Christians    passing by on the other

 

other, the once-red Japanese

maple, bare now, gray but

see its great muscled limbs

stretch out low, then curve up

as if to embrace, climb on a limb

and see in the cleft a small cluster,

as if arranged, of curling red

 

red heart pulse of — 

red the fountain filled

with Jesus’s blood, in another

country filled with martyrs’ — 

red the last apple on the tree I

could reach if I leaned — 

red that looks blue until it’s shed

 

shed skin feathers leaves water

-shed dividing line deciding

time    earth-age named

anthro- for us, our own doing our

undoing losing dying unless — 

the most fit the worst

fit for earth in all its ages

 

age mine    day mine    past

my appointed    night

mine    full moon    mourning

moon in a clear sky    old

light: wanted to make an opening

out from closing down but

enough to leave behind

 

behind them a mighty ocean

around them beasts and wilde men

after them us, closing our shores

ahead of us, rising oceans

forgive us this day our

immigrant past that isn’t even — 

first which shall be last

 

last chance ditch effort gasp:

gone-before last and could-be last:

how much can one elegy hold?

could this be it? a friend wrote, her last

words — last lost it for all our earth?

but last night that moon, all the way home

 — from Old English follow:    to last beyond last

 

last night I woke and found my body-

held living-for-now a piece of all — 

over the graves the beautiful

skeletal: chalice and vase, tangle

and dance, the white bones

of the birch, its vertical script — 

over my bones, this living that is my

 

my life my living my being my loving

my friend my friends my one my love

the huge white moon, missing almost nothing

my love in my arms, in my bed again

the advent candle for earth for hope

this almost last this work these leavings

my blessings my many my thanks for these

 

these days and nights, these lines

have changed (you must change)

my life my loving (my one) and

now this leaving behind this opening

out (the spaces between the dark

lines of the great unleaved) to where

the night is as clear as the day