Walking my block, waiting for his call,
palming my still and silent phone
I go back to a flattened bird
and pry it from the tar
I’d say, Wes, I found you
something dead, something so
full of potential, so flat
_____Hands full: vibration
close, his voice close, the bird’s
flight so close, I’m wide
as horizons something and nothing
press to being
______—
I left the bird on my stoop all week.
I think you must be gone as men
get gone from me: suddenly,
as if we were swept
in a pile in late October, wet and close,
until I find I am, myself, the whole
pile of leaves and you are just
the leaving
__________It isn’t
that flies land on the bird’s eyes
but that each day when I come near
they lift