The Heads

Summary

At the heads the waves crash rage at rocks and you watch,

you stretch your attention like it can't snap.

There are songs stuck in you that you might hum when your

light's snuffed, when your tree's cut, neck's split.

When the metaphors eat the real.

But how will you sing when your brain's gone? Here's how;

when you die, don't think of the mind, but feel how your

body is.

For if creasing's strange, why not uncreasing.

Why not chrysalis.

Why not as your brain discovers second childhood, your body

forgets its markings too.

Why not bonelessness can mumble song.

I've not thought to ask if heaven has seasons or how I might

be cured of my need for new, but in my city the sun has come

out for the first time in weeks and it knows how long since

I've spoken to a man or woman.

And it says you must go and find some park bench with a

plaque to a local who loved the sparrows, and you must carve

their name into a napkin and let it go in the wind.

You cannot mourn all the dead, it says.

You must let them go one by one.