Artifact

Love the dead
love all the dead
remember every face
every dying place
and the sound of every voice
their hair and their hands
and the way they return
to you
when you hear a song
you didn’t know
but that sounds like it comes
from inside you someplace
like a name
like a light
like a clock
like a warning

Safe

This cool glass night
this wind, this uncertain light
speak to me low
like fire
my memory is a monk
safe in a house of roses
my eyes are a song
about roads, dust
about a burning river
unbidden, yet returning forever

Almost falling

I remember you almost falling
into emptiness and thinking
the air should have wings
like the blood has memories
like when the music bites
hard it almost feels like
bells ringing in darkness
announcing your burial
over and over like
your final hour of the light
but the true nature of falling
is more like a frightened
bird’s flight through an open window
than the weight of your name
carved in stone

For my older brother (1958 – 2023)

photo credits
(where not otherwise credited)

“Silent man” / photograph by Joppe Spaa on Unsplash.com

You can support The Palace with the purchase of Everything Is Important Until Nothing Is Important (2022), my first published collection of poems.