At night, I loose a hundred  million broken stars; in the dark, their lights  scatter across my dreams. They sketch your face, your lips,  your hands, your throat, your tongue to build a likeness I can feel with no straight lines. I smear the coffee grounds  around to tell your future. I see an arrow drawn across a centaur’s shoulder, then pour my coffee through  the petals of a flower, and dream your body well,  again, and full of healing. I smell your lavender perfume upon my pillow, an...

Ash trees—stone-naked— stripped, clear to their nodes. Wind pursuing dead leaves through life-sucked green in the yard. Your mouth, above all, the liveliest thing. 

The ambulance turned down the lane while I was mulching behind the shed  where I’d hammered four-by-fours into  a groundhog tunnel with a ten pound  sledge. I threw down the shovel, watched red light pulsing into the low gray clouds. My neighbor, who, too, had stopped, started moving again on his green tractor. We each raised a slow wave, a hundred yards away. I don’t remember his name. We spoke last fall. By the time I took a drink and wiped my face with my shirt front, little black shadow...