~

What comes after, in the walking home alone forever, & the writing it

Out, is like the testimony of a witness, always imperfect, changing,

Until one is spent in the exhaustion of the music, in each twisted,

Unmemorized limb of mesquite scoring the blood spattered

Hawk’s screech of each note—no voice left in it & no accompaniment—

What comes after is the knowledge that

One is no longer part of it, & can no longer be part of it,

Who, with no one to answer to, passes the brown, indifferent grasses

In the winter months, the lascivious blooms that come on later, cock

Purple & blush pink, noticing them one moment, then looking away

Without focusing on anything in particular, unable to believe either

The chill of visitation or any lie the wind tells him—

Forgetting, & becoming,

Without the slightest awareness of it in that moment, another.

--from A Singing in the Rocks; Larry Levis

[via flowerville]