NO, TELL HIM—

—when winter makes his grave twice sepulchral,

that ice evanesces eventually back

to green, the closet of stuck time unsticking.

To see him means to see air without

him, seas of dust where his feet could interrupt,

a shipwreck no one knew to need.

Then it was spring. The alluvial earth of grief

found its hoof’s bottom and went. Madly

pastoral, cornhusk-rigid and resolute,

morning stayed without pathos, stayed

the doom-frost heart till the hard of it splayed.

Then getting over it had to be redone. Daily,

a door to step through. Daily the hostile enigma:

to enter, turn the knob though the knob will burn.