Inland

I.

Reckless as a pack of wild dogs,
autumn leaves loosen and lodge
in the window bars. Each black-tipped

visitation is a carcass: in my faith
we do not embalm the dead.
I move to bed's edge and am again

a pilot, searching for the wounded,
collecting miles, discerning
nothing, reduced to an enormity of cells.

The woman polishing silver
in her housecoat, that woman is my wife, adoring
our last possessions. I took her