till we’re no more than campfires
our families encircle. Our families then—
beneath the lantern of a saline bag—
rehearse their own deaths through us.
Meanwhile our pores open inward
under a deluge of morphine
and memory is all we have left to eat.
Slowly it grows to enclose us, before sailing
like a whale’s belly lightlessly on.
Our organs then, if we gift them to the living,
will rise, piece by piece, on cloaks
of dry ice. The small planes that await them
chirr over this city like crickets.
See their shadows leap freely, like those
of skimmed stones on the drowned.
And the men here—paused at a crosswalk
and listening—can feel their heels
lift as the crowd pushes them on.
Great poem. The poem strikes such emotions from every single person who has been in a position to watch someone pass. It puts into words feeling we didn’t know we had.