Usher

Make of me
a mercy—

This stone-eyed world
I can’t see past

to what waits
in the wings

____

The dead wake for nothing.
     Or wake & nothing
is still there.

The wide meadow. Deep grass.
     Distant ships.
The far fires

Only glimpsed
     from a distance.
Nothing looks back,

blinks twice.

____

Beg the ghosts—
be gone.

Bid the dawn
so long—

Let the day darken
your bones.

Let the dusk
usher us

into it—hail
the thick dark

alongside me,
singing.

____

Finish
me like a fish.

____

Easy then being nothing
     wanting more. Now,
a small something,

I want only
     an end
to the suffering—

to quit this knocking—
     like a boat lashed
tight to the dock, tossed

during storm—
     either cut me
aloose, sent

wild to sea, or yank
     me inland—dry-docked—
spare me this long

longing, tugging
     at the leash, moored
in between.

____

I believe no more
in nothing—not yet

in something—
the severed wing

of a bird in the road
still stirs, lifted

by wind.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2023)