In our presence there was only the God who had chosen

your people, he had been there in your father’s and mother’s

house, and we had kept to the candles

and the braided bread, to the principle

that your life was precious. No God but yours

was there with us, any more than one might

surbed a coal upright on a fire

or a granite stone on a grave. You died

an animal of the land and water, where we’d

swayed naked, carrot-golden, its

ripples like the shirring of surah silk,

as you went into the ground in a linen slip.

After the hormones you felt you might not be

a man, anymore. I said, you are a man

who has learned about women from the outside in

and inside out, the chemo had loosed you from some

sir-like bonds, some male ions,

as well as from the bonds of sexual joy.

You still shaved your powerful, eloquent

face—I would touch my lips to your bristle—

and now your beard is growing without sun

in the lightless place, but let no one say

you slipped the surly bonds of earth

to touch the face of God—the gods

of the elements had slipped the bonds of nothing to create you.

Can’t Sleep

Turning one cheek, then

the other, to the cool sheet,

I remember long-legging up onto your

hospice cot, and pulling the railing up

after me, like a tree-house ladder.

How we rode that cloud, its low heaven,

murmuring our naked truths,

kissing then sleeping. You could no longer move,

just your hands and a little your head,

turning it partway and pushing your lips

my way when you wanted my mouth. I was not there

at the end, my darling, but sometimes now

I pretend to magic myself down

into your coffin, along you, and love your

soul with my soul. It was violent

to see them set you, Carl Michael,

into the excavation so deep I could

not see the raw pine

roof Nik created for you until I

edged closer. When I can’t sleep I

get my back against the grain home-kilned at the

staging—along your right side—

you, stretched out, a mighty dancer

at rest, planted in a freeze, thawing now.

Whenever I see a scene, on film,

underground—a narrow stone passage

with lights coming forward through it, up,

up, till we see one light is on a brow

and the other its reflection in the water,

I feel they’re honoring you,

your beauty and courage being turned to earth,

slowly given back. I told you I would

find you, gorgeous one, I told you.

Komodo

When I saw, on the floor, back in the unlighted

pantry, the forgotten trap, with a scribble of

small mammal under it—maybe

smallest mammal: bumblebee bat;

pocket monkey; pygmy jerboa;

Etruscan shrew; hog-nosed bat—

I said to myself, I’ll empty it tomorrow,

open the plastic jaws and drop

the little steaks and chops with limbs onto a

piece of tinfoil on the carriage stone.