all
over
the
body
finishing
touches

Several eras have come to a close
In this land of extremes. In our own day 
We visit the slow process of decay 
As it moves in the sun to decompose 

Cold fog hovers in the coastal highlands
Mixed with lingering rain. The inert stream
Quickens: water fingers the creekbed sands,

  Where is paradise without the gate?
Ask any gardener, his bags of bonemeal busy
  keeping the weedy world at bay.
Within its boxwood walls, like that great kitchen

He was not himself. He was just a shell
                a hermit crab had made into home
                                awhile, then left behind.

I thought I knew something
about loneliness, but I was wrong.
I'd never been that far east before,

Winter, with each woolly breath, I lie.
I have been unfaithful. Wearing next to nothing,

We were too late to catch the moon,
already hauled from the swamp
and hung up to dry. Moon melon,

Night fell on the rain, rain fell on the dark,
indifferently. Clouds hooded the moon.
A heart-shaped leaf shook under the weight

His new heaviness he inhabits
all the way to the fingertips,
as if lunch were a rehearsal