Don’t tell me there isn’t something pretty about you / (don’t tell me you don’t know it).

I cradle him, big kid curled like an infant, water rocking, / chlorine staunching his vivid knees, belly swollen, / legs blue.

If the places you go become you, / you must account for the drive-through / liquor store housed in the old carwash.

“And you know what the raven says.”

about his sadness. / About how the moon hung full / that morning, every morning

At sixty-one, I count and recount my remaining summers.

After the final harvest, the forecast / called for freezing temperatures / and the end of this winsome world.

Blind to what tickles the delta of nerves there / you rub a humming with the back of your hand

These gravestones left stranded / warped from sunrises and drift / —they need paint, tides, a hull

Remember that time your dog died and I didn’t tell you for months