[mosaic] [With Henry David Thoreau and a Glove]

I am still a brain with fire in it—all
those poetries inside
me crying out at once—

it matters more
these days as boon companions die—wind
blasting them

to papery smithereens—
I am voiceover now
for doom—the one

in my head that knows it can die—
all its lightning
strikes just memes

of joy—
as if it—joy—were the parasite
I carried—

riding invasion and adhesion
to the bitter end—
all the compass points

ablaze—which now for me
is next flight
to see a friend—

there’s a worm
in his head eating storage—
he is a computer

shutting down and
I am witless
to find the plug—

some CTRL ALT DEL
so I can reboot Cirque Du Soleil
or Buddy Guy’s or just that frigid day

we canoed Thoreau’s river—
Grass-ground…as long as
grass grows

and water runs [there]—it will be
Concord River
only while men lead

peaceable lives— Ah Peaceable Life!—
maybe
that’s all the memory palace is

once shorn of trauma—
the art—NO!—act
of dying—I see no art yet—

just me coaxing—walking last few steps—
it was winter—
he loaned me gloves—

every poem I think I told him—
even this one—
an elegy underwritten by rivers and endless weeping