Sleep Is Not Unlike a Waiting Room
       

The dead deer is more alive to you now
than reclined, early September, eyes lit

in the chill shadow of the cherry tree.
The dead deer is more alive to you now

than the featherless bird without a nest.
Neither do you claim by the happiness

of plans, dropping your pencil to the floor
as if to ask what it means to scrape skin

crudely, pushing a child until he bleeds.
You too think frequently of the jumpers,

whether any stole for the arms of god
or if only the sky, the blue it's said

that seemed to ring the smoke like a halo.
Like gypsum, like horses leaving those birds

splayed, to fall must have felt like flying,
jaspers in exchange for the body's flesh.

Like rifles falling with the sun, flying
like chorus. You took photos of the deer

by which I mean you blinked a broken thing
lying there, a bruise of wrinkle & dust.

The dead deer is more alive to you now
than childhood. To wonder why you weren't

saying much, not unlike his awful shirt,
thought like a caption for the falling man.

Tweet

Copyright © 2012 Michael Robins All rights reserved
from Ladies & Gentlemen
saturnalia books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission