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The dead are our largest fact
Growing every day like a little boy
Into a man or a poet, though likely not
Both — the dreamer
And the dream, a photograph
Of an old camera. God
Waiting his turn
Like the one chamber
With something in it, a stage
Manager who only goes on
All in black
To move things off.
Laying out missed
Opportunities in the sun to dry,
Fade —
I thought each candle
Gives you a separate wish
The blue hunger, the one
somewhere in Trakl’s heart
blood blossoming
in the sink
like latte art. I begin
my Catalog of Mistakes
with Revelations
the sputtering
machines in Jarboe songs
and children’s drawings
of angels
for Kristi
Sometimes you go a long time without being
Reminded that no seal is perfect, and
Absent a reminder you begin to think
One is, and absent any evidence
To the contrary you begin to trust
In that seal,
Put valuable things in the path of the flood
There would be if it broke, valuable
To you, anyway: three drawings by Michael
Burkard, a postcard featuring some rivers
flow back by Lucille Clifton, a crewel
Embroidery featuring apples, bees, flowers
And ladybugs your wife
Stabbed 1000 times then held up to the light
