for Dean
Looking through the glass
as her hand fell, as doctors
turned and walked away
you knew there was no reason
to go on. This is the way the world
ends. What good is love
if it cannot keep you both alive?
The last minutes fall away
like flakes of ash. Her children leave.
Then she too is gone. What’s left?
A sky of grief, the long green Gulf sailing
away to the edge of the world? You, watching
it every day, all night, waking again here?
