Ode for Ereshkigal

It's just the dead.  The dead, the dead, the dead.

On New Year's Eve at midnight, for one minute all the animals can speak and it's only by the bitter grace of knowing it won't do any good that they don't tell you how badly you've hurt them, or for how long, or what a different world would have meant to them.  Instead, they whisper "I love you" to each other and slump together back to sleep.

The dead want you to hold them even in pieces.  Whether it's you in pieces or them.  As long as it isn't both, we can make this happen.  Even.

They walk to the end of the driveway every day to check the mail even though they can't pick up your envelopes for you.

The animals die together and this is what most of us mean by "flock."

Knit a cotton shroud for the spring.  This is what most of us mean by "fog."

War makes the dead irritable over all the incursions.  They want you to mail them back their damaged skin, priority.  They want me to speak and say, "I love you," but they want me to say it to the fog and I don't think anyone will hear.

Clouds shredded in pieces and it doesn't matter which height.  Look down.  Look down.

On New Year's Eve at midnight drums will beat like hearts, but like empty hearts, all skin, no blood, all stage, and try to drown out the drowning.

Don't shoot.  Sing the dead back to sleep like a flock of orbiting meteors.