Keeping Up with the Dead

 I hear them running

through dream, listen to

things they said, recall

we walked beside creeks

and ponds, viewed skies and

sunsets, dogwood trees,

magnolias, lakes.

Specificity

becomes their nature,

that is to say words

come from the same lips

planted a sloppy

kiss on my cheeks, a

wet repulsion.

They keep going on

down a sad hole in

which I place marbles

greased with shame, spiral

tunnel to the end

of all things I once

believed in such as

fractions, decimals,

infinity, pi.