Death leaves a wake
of uniformed questions.
The pragmatics of memory
rise to the surface―bodies
appearing in a lake. Oh look,
another, rising over there.
This one resembling that hotel
in Connecticut straight out of
Hemingway, the library
that once admitted only men
now ringing with both our voices,
the bookstore with its sun-streaked
café we could have lived in forever.
What proposition is this part of?
What logic, this sticky, feverish mass
of recollection without solid legs?
Now sloughing against the day’s
shoreline, its rhythm so unpredictable,
its lyric unspeakable, its music
unintelligible and all its own