Death was a word
   I thought of when my first dog
   died. It was a thing I held when young
   and dumb, smashing grasshoppers
   with a bottle in the yard.
   It rested in coffins I never saw,
   grew an atmosphere around the weathered.

I touched it once.

But now I know
   it lives in a midnight phone call
   under pouring rain in a parking lot
   where a man paces with the thought
of never being able to love a voice he hears.