Your Eight Storied Heaven

Dante’s book is where we left it.

Not even the wind turns its pages.

I wanted to be limpid

so you could be perfect

 

and I did it imperfectly

as I wrote your elegy.

Come back when you want to hear

how terribly your floor has warped

 

how much my spine hurts

under the burden of your books.  I told

you no matter whose nest

we flew to next we’d

 

be in each other’s brittle bones.

You were listening or reading.

Your guitar neck is unrepaired

make of that what you will.

 

Nothing is healed.

Just fixed or unfixed.

Your swamp will reclaim us all

no matter what floor of heaven

 

we descend to.