All Death’s birthdays passed me by, and then
It was just November. The canyons were still
Gold by the creeks and unseasonably warm
But toothed with shadows all day long, while
Up high, in the aspen plateaus and small ponds,
All was bony white and properly cold but bright.
The rowboat with two men talking and fishing
Felt like a haunting from earlier autumn, as if
The same boat, same men from weeks ago,
Years ago, decades ago, were an apparition
Doomed to float around the lake in all seasons.
I looked longingly at the cold water. To swim,
Even convulsed with shudders, is better
Than to fall. To lie down in minuscule wavelets
Like the scales of a slumbering monster of ice,
To lie down like an incision in the water’s side
And float like sutures on the surface, allowing
The wounded water to slowly close over
And heal—but not while that damn fishing boat
Floats by—that would be better than dying
In the usual hospital bed or accident.
I had heard that it takes a long time to cool
The blood of a pulsing mammal, a long time
To get safely past that mad moment
Of hallucination and leaping about, stripping
To skin. But time is not a quantity to be measured,
Only a measure of what’s lost. I love how cold
Water reflects the least bit of light and shines.
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