Surprise

for Dean Young

What do I owe you 
for these rainbows?

Running the morning 
after you died—

blood rising in me
like a bucket of hummingbirds—

I covered the hill.
I could not deny

the stone spun off the passing 
hot car tires into the perfect

center of my spine. 
That was one sign.

But I am still with the people 
leaping away from the gorge.

My new dog keeps blinking 
out of oblivion.

I needed to tell you:
I have this book.

Reading it is like touching a whale 
alone in San Francisco.

Beyond this,
I’m still so unmoved.
 
You should hear now 
outside, these apples falling

through the dark.
I can’t get a single thing done.


Snow

I gave my father’s books away. 
I gave some to the government, 
burned some—I sold them
to buy nothing.

How, at first, I held them, 
marked them
with imagined sorrow 
and drops of my own 
blood if it showed.

The next day, it snowed and snowed, 
and the power was gone.
I could see my own voice 
inside.