44

To a Hollywood Projector

For want of human referent

this death is not the same.

Whom does it serve that your pretension

repeats thus endlessly the lie

by which only my shadow is still visible?

I do not dance your measure,

grieve your dramatic grief.

Death is no leveler.

I count literally: by days of sun, by nights of moon

growing the seasonal maturities,

felling the leaves at years and aeons;

my dear, I know their number.

Reaching skyward, I can halt the wheel,

spin it backwards to visible memory:

red leaves fly treeward, lapse to green,

and the tall grass-tips shrink tender,

thrust back towards roots

that spiral down, down into light.

Enough. Skyward again I turn,

spin once more the wheel upon its unbroken course.

Why panic so?

Look: that invented shade you made up

still walks your unruffled lawn.

But how do you name the grasses’ mute

unbendingness?