There is a stranger
you see more and more of
every year, He is silt
in the riverbed,
and the water tables
of your mystery
rise to their final levels,
the spitting image
of your Death

He is selling a bed
that belonged to your father,
coming in low dumping
the boots of your brother
in the high pasture covered
deep in your last winter's snow

Like a flower in the night,
Death drifts over our shoulders
like a boat with no eyes for the oars,
no place for a man's cold hands

The Church has a record of your birth,
but Death keeps its own dossier

When the Moon is pulling blood
from all of its many lovers,
Death is caterwauling with catfish,
a bone in its mouth, shedding
all its skins and secret light,
I, like you, set out a dish
of milk before going to bed.