Earth Elegy

By the time it fell, the tree was already part rot,
eaten by termites and ants,

stained with rain and urine, colonized.  For years
I watched from my kitchen

as it ungathered in leaves and needles,

bleached, dissolving, though I hardly noticed
how the slow orgy

of weather took it season after season
into the pelvic

trench of dirt, and I got used to seeing it
pointing down the hill

like a giant’s fibrous arm
soft with fungus.

We’d kick it to see the wood crumble, see
the insects, horrible kinds,

writhe out of its cracks.  And once I read that our air
is full of life we can’t see

and thought of the sky falling with the falling tree,

and disintegrating with the tree, a company
of beings, billions,

dying as we were dying and other beings driving
through the debris

and living off it—the dining and dead together,
unseen, spinning and tilted

like us on our axis, pitched toward some
ever-place

of crashing trees, ravenous creatures,
the dirt lit

with their living-dying backbones.

The Changing Coat

When I wake up, heart
up my throat, a fear taste—
getting ready for
the changing skin.

Your hat on the knob
of the banister, tilted.
You ask, why are you
holding up your head

with your hand? I’m tired,
stripped down, maybe
I passed one of my deaths
getting ready for

the changing skin.
Sometimes, love, I can be
your sister, dead,
come to you in her

changing skin—tortoise
shell eyes, through gravel
and moss.  And you can be
my brother, dead, saying:

I never meant to hurt anyone.
We are looking across
the table. It’s a field,
long, spread out, pale,

the ground’s icy. We’re wearing
our new coats and we’ve passed
one or more of our deaths
along the way. There’s no

afterlife, it’s the same, the
same life, and when
we remember that we pull
close our changing coats,

we tilt toward each other,
the ground is softer
than I thought,
our foreheads touch.

My Lost Needle

Never had I desire to mend
            hems or dangling buttons,

but tonight, though I can no longer
            easy aim the frayed end

into the eye, though we squint,
            needle and I, at each other,

and my hand trembles, yet feels true
            the needle between my fingers,

the tether of thread as I pull it
            through red linen, just the right

turn in my wrist, not too fast, thread
            rubbing the blouse, repeating

mend, mend, my dearest, hold fast, let me
            patch you, no one will know,

you limp in my hand, draped on my lap,
            my other body. I with

my warm, fine instrument, you undone,
            never whole without me.

I would sew till the world around wore
            patches bright and uneven,

sew my childhood back into my bones,
            I would bind, I would bind

what falls apart. My hand is happy—
            piercing, rising, circling back—

taking me thou needle, thou red thread,
            stitch to stitch, my way back,

taking there, and I go, what more
            wanting, what more?