The light went dim, and then demented.
And that was the queasy last of it.
When they finagled his body down from its hanging tree,
they gave it to me
and said “Take, grieve.” I sent the others home
and I arrayed him in his tomb
like a shop girl dressing up a window.
What a display. I anointed his brow
with balsam and ointment.
I held him tightly, close as a confidence,
and yet: It is no secret. No one knows
what happens when the black hole
of death collapses upon a person’s acres.
I clothed him in a sheath of gauze, pale as paper.
I draped his eyes with widow’s mites.
I canted the prayers of an Israelite wife.
I set his features. I combed his beard.
And then I disappeared
into the slow, sore torture
that is mourning. And mourning
is, by Christ, the very word for it because it dawns
on you. A cold stretch of day yawning
open, the inevitable sunrise
of solitude. Truly this I tell you: More dire
than the orgy of the golden calf,
is the story of the god who breaks in half.
That was a couple of days ago.
And now,
An unblunted light numbs the white horizon
and a redolence of meadowrue fills the garden
air with evergreen. There are flowers all around me.
How long have I been sleeping?
His stone is gone.
This room is empty. I am alone.
Where he went I cannot guess.
And his absence feels worse that his death
did, if that makes any sense.
It is just after six
in the goddamn morning.
I am but a wasteland of worry.
Did someone come and steal him
from the grave? All that remains are the linens
that I left him in, aromatic, sheer
and ghostly. An angel says he is not here.
Where the fuck is he?