I’m at a double wake
in Springfield, for a childhood
friend and his father

See how the white turns pale blue as the night
creeps in, full of mosquitoes and fireflies.

Your image doesn’t dim; it
resonates through all my life.

Shy defiers of the existential world,
you draw your veil across the unpleasant,
then the head turns away, the body turns away,

Brutal lips, slasher lips—as a stunned toddler
pecked by fifteen older female cousins carries the red

Into his kit when sent to the front he had tucked
his black three-piece suit and through night

Little excavators, postage stamps
of living stone, you seek to save me
from the encroaching dust—scratch it away,

For today at least the snow has gone
and the backyard is awash with daffodils.
See how the sun has come to court you? Quick,

It could be like one of those dreams
where you must carry water in your hands
for half a mile to put some fire out

Lacrimae of the body, for whom do you weep?
What are your griefs, fears? Do you have a favorite
someplace whom violent motion makes you remember?