You are fallen darkness,
the ghost ship
in the wake of a quarter-moon

Your depth
is like a blue grave
looking back
from a burial at sea

Your hands are shadows
over a campfire
lustering against the lightless
river, palms folding
like prayers over
the embering heat
of driftwood and deadfall
retreating into ash

You are heaven's shoal
of dead stars, the obsidian
lip of the shoreline
I approach without light

The shallow groundswell
of sand un-printing my tracks,
as if to refuse my sunless steps

You are streetlights left behind me
back home, softening now
beyond their dead-end streets.

No one stays long
in the house of the bereaved

The hounds are lonely tonight
but not the priest

I dream I am still
in Tennessee grieving

Drinking moonshine
and branch water
looking for a fight

The undertaker creeps out
of the farmer's daughter's room

His wife beats a spider
with a broom then sweeps

When Death beats his child
nobody listens to her weep

My mother used to beg,
Son, don't write about Death,
We'll cross that ditch soon enough

I have nothing but respect
for the dead, I said

But there is no doubt in my mind
Death is a bad dog, a real *****.