What if you knew youād be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life lineās crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesnāt signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
wonāt say Thank you, I donāt remember
theyāre going to die.
A friend told me sheād been with her aunt.
Theyād just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her auntās powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragonās spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?