How It Is

Shall I say how it is in your clothes?

A month after your death I wear your blue jacket.

The dog at the center of my life recognizes

you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic.

In the left pocket, a hole.

In the right, a parking ticket

delivered up last August on Bay State Road.

In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,

a flinging from the pods of the soul.

My skin presses your old outline.

It is hot and dry inside.

I think of the last day of your life,

old friend, how I would unwind it, paste

it together in a different collage,

back from the death car idling in the garage,

back up the stairs, your praying hands unlaced,

reassembling the bits of bread and tuna fish

into a ceremony of sandwich,

running the home movie backward to a space

we could be easy in, a kitchen place

with vodka and ice, our words like living meat.

Dear friend, you have excited crowds

with your example. They swell

like wine bags, straining at your seams.

I will be years gathering up our words,

fishing out letters, snapshots, stains,

leaning my ribs against this durable cloth

to put on the dumb blue blazer of your death.