it is the sun streaming through my
bay-sized sliding door windows
and the white-apped mountains
framed within them
that I will miss most
in winter.
clearly, I can’t hold
two things at once without
favor, and
today I have
a piece of paper,
a dozen dead things
wilted in their vase
to remind me.

there is a touch of red
sprinkled around the glass
that browns and sets as dry
on the sill in
my small uncurtained bedroom that
I pace when I have
too much on my  mind
and today they remind me

life is a patient rot
to tomb, a gauntlet and
fluid so I  better keep
moving.

life is a patient
gut to get to
wound     it was April
on Earth Day when I wrote
My Brother Is Dead
in the back of a notebook I would never
look at again.

thrown away to make room
as I packed the car
two years later.

“grief (part two)”