How you used to come when called.
Blood-in-Me. Best-of-All.
I liked when you’d show up wet
like wet marble, or liver.
Keeping nothing in us then
to commend ourselves to God:
our minds wandering during sex,
bird shapes shifting in the reeds.
No-Grave-to-Visit.
No-Sheets-on-the-Bed.
I drank from you
as a goat from the trough.
Boulders blushed in the rain.
Like stars, there are saints now
for almost everything.
Red-One. Drowned-One.
Even the dog knows his name
and how to do “down.”
Each morning at the old pond
he swims himself tired.
Little-Blue-Sultan.
Four-Chambered-Heart.
Drugs don’t make you stay dead,
you told me once. But then
the drugs made you stay dead.
