Pigs eat the rats that eat the corn,
and we eat the pigs and forget about this.
Life cannot shake off death.
Like a study in genteelness,
you were neatly dressed in a jacket
and trousers. Removing your coffin,
they leant it up against a wall. Things always
start out organized and get messier.
Outside, birds scattered, jip-jip and pip-pip-pip,
as some new version of America became itself.
Each night I dreamed the dream called elevation
in which a wondrous man sought my hand and my heart.
Then I awoke, and he departed.
Look at the flock of pigeons
flying into a thunderhead! I always feel an elevation
when small things overmaster the great.