The Temperature Of Things

Beneath these delicate, ice-scarred branches
you raise weeping, tearless eyes in doubt
sun-ward where the autumn chill won’t reach.
The band ringing your finger is warmer than his
now that he’s a cold-blooded thing deep
like a turtle in the mud of a December pond.
You know he is in a shell too, the carapace
you bought the other shock-sodden day
when he was a little bit warmer than time allows now.
You think he’s warm there, still, not white like the ashes
fallen from your lip-stained cigarette, once a flame
all but smoked out between trembling fingers.
You exhale over those red, red lips, warm rosy breath,
a bit smoky, which won’t warm his comely cheek
though you think he may be home, waiting,
displaced, returned from an unplanned trip with
bouquets and postcards from heaven-gilt cities.
You’ve not seen this place before, in this light,
slanted shadows, heatless, resting on their backs.
You doubt the cold, the cold which becomes him,
the temperature of mere things: like the flowers,
the wind-tossed robe and the book of prayer,
the dirt tracing your favorite shoes and the
hardly hidden spades leaning against
that leafless tree with lichen-clad trunk.
Turning your searching, sorrowed face away from
those cold insistent shadows lying there far too long
you make your own departure certain,
like the chill-touch of those nearby headstones.

©Bill Gnade 1997, 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

This poem is associated with this essay on death and dying.