In sleep when an old man’s body is no longer
aware of his boundaries, and lies flattened by
gravity like a mere of wax in its bed . . . It drips
down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a
cheek . . . Under the back door into the silver meadow,
like a pool of sperm, frosty under the moon, as if in
his first nature, boneless and absurd.
The moon lifts him up into its white field, a cloud
shaped like an old man, porous with stars.
He floats through high dark branches, a corpse tangled
in a tree on a river.
