what remains here, after you,
makes sound only the finest instruments
can detect--waves
from deep space

the December blast outside
a summer breeze compared to dead air
in this heated tomb

quilts you left smell of us
wrapped in two of them, I'm still
shivering, staring at the
door you shut,

surprised
it did not shatter,
so bound by ice

not one
of the moon's mystic seas is filled
with their yelping  

though those
haunting harmonies save me from solitude  
on the naked prairies

the sky, cold, awash
with wispy clouds, carries their sour song,
a dirge no creatures emulate

like they, I howl at the proud wolf moon;
it ignores me as it does them, but  ‘tis regally round
for only a blink in time, then mournful
as it wanes to penumbra  
in earth’s shadow

the wild dogs and I
cease our serenade, but wait in darkness
to cast another refrain when the ornery orb again
filches the dying sun’s light

many have suggested fire
but I choose not to become cremains  
I want a plain pine bed
no magic elixirs
in my veins

why waste fluid
and time, treasured commodities,
before the *******

if law did not proscribe,
I would gladly let a stout stranger
toss me into a raging river

though my kin
may protest, fishes, crustaceans
would rejoice

after all,
lesser creatures
are always hungry
and grateful

each night
he would enter his boy's room  
Bobby's tomb, he had come to call it  
and turn the TV off  

before remotes, 24/7 programming
and the infomercial, plump with desperate promises
the tube gave a final hail, the stars 'n stripes whipping, the national anthem screaming, and an anonymous promise
to return tomorrow in a perfect world

it would not be perfect for Bobby,
no matter how much thoughtless Thorazine,
hazy Haldol, or mesmerizing Mellaril
they shoved down his throat

now and then
before flipping the **** to off
he would sit with his sleeping son
stare into the screen, listen to its hissing;
he would swear he saw something  
in the gray ocean of static  

not trillions of senseless electrons
busy bouncing, but a lone sailor, rowing away
in a foaming sea, riding raging swells,  
bound for a black horizon

one his tormented son
had reached long ago

after dinner on the porch
was the best time, he and grandpa watching,
waiting for the storms--a thunderclap
the sweetest note to both of them

sheets of rain rolled across
the big pasture, downdrafts made the boy shiver,
even cradled in the old man's arms

neither would speak, grandpa's good arm
would point, or wave, these movements a code
between generations, theirs at least

finally a twister appeared in the west
growing plumper as it spun across the fields,
spitting gray dirt from its base, a zigzagging
dancer without a care in the world

grandma and Aunt Helen
fled to the cellar, imploring the pair
to follow

though they didn't, for all their hours
gazing at the heaving heavens would have been
profligate had they hid in the ground,
missing creation's greatest crescendo  

the angry funnel ate a section of fence
wide as a football field, and felled a tree
not a quarter mile from the house--its roots
too shallow, grandpa thought

when the tempest passed, the sun made
an appearance, slipping between the cloud bank
that birthed the tornado, and the silent soil
in the devil's wake

in its final moments,
it glared at the interlopers on the porch,
perchance admonishing them the promise
of its golden rays was no sacred contract
but a fickle gift

"instantly" doesn't apply
though we use the word to describe
an eternity that passes
before one’s eyes

in the flash flesh takes
to surrender, when a bullet passes
through a heart, a skull is crushed
in a head-on collision  

let me pause a hand an "instant,"
to make the car key turn, or the foot fall
from the curb a momentous moment,
later

altering all destiny, by chance,
if I had the chance, to be master of a tiny cogwheel,
of one machine--I don't need omnipotence,
only the reins of time

rummaging through the ruins
of the landfill, his sole fellow explorer
a cur, content when his snout sniffed mold
blissful when he discovered a can

his aspirations grander than the canine,
he hoped to find artifacts of the ancients,
and digging deep he did, an Apple, one of Job's
first magical machines, the monitor
dull but without a solitary crack

then a turntable, its diamond stylus
long turned to nub, veneer half peeled
by the blade of time--its final symphony spun
eons ago, or at least two dozen years

finally a Dr. Pepper sign, an old as time,
its 10, 2 faint but still there, its 4 long gone
the masterpiece's artist never lamenting
its weathered fate: he too had his time
his labors filling his pockets, pleasing
his eyes, and immortalizing him
in the open bowels of the earth