Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. -Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep


Birds in flock are tilting
in the pink gloam,

a black convex wine stain
pouring from the last orange faces

of exhausted trees, flayed
by the new freeze.

My oldest friend smokes menthols
in the driveway, discussing

the crushing vicissitudes
of the women we have loved,

until voices thicken
into mint-smoke plumes.

Night is a coarse dough
come November:

knotted, knitted, clay-skinned.
These gaps between us all

are so lonesome. You expect
the silence to eventually contract,

but it doesn't; it won't.
Birds are slanting so heavily,

as if they are drunk.
"Dead men are heavier

than broken hearts."
They slip away, so that

the only sound is wind,
crawling up the hillside.