The bench next to me,
where the Lord would sit
with another poet,
is empty. There is
not even His absence.

*

Take it all from me, I beg
I could never stalk away; a crow
might abandon a nest
when the season is over. A time
to brood, a time to move on.
Loss, when turned to the light
at just the right angle, is an asset.
I take it all back. Preserve me,
oh Lord, in amber.

*

Let me be comfortable in my skin
an ugly fat splotched dog
loved by people who rub my belly,
whisper silly names.

*

An altar of skulls—fox and hawk,
toad and human. A candle flickers
from the eye sockets. What new
god could challenge dread, dazzle?

*

If Orpheus had sung of a rocky hillside
where a white lamb nurses, butting
the ewe’s bursting udders, of

the way water tastes as it falls
into a stone basin, caught
in cupped hands—then she would

have followed into the light. Instead,
he sang of conquest, indoors
in a bed where childbirth is pain

the way the Gods ordained. She
slipped away, phrase by phrase.

*

So that Death will just be a caller
who also loves ugly dogs,
and will stoop down to whisper
into my silky, smelly ear.