Visitor

some mornings i wake before the misted rain

and rise from the bed as a visitor

to myself

the voices of the newly dead

already migrating through me

dark river of the impending winter

emptying itself into another year

with the questions I no longer ask

the trees now bare though more alive

than ever and like a deathless foreigner

the air seizes into a rarefied meadow of ice

my body slightly more than a cartridge of light

the elder stars turning to watch

from their black cloaks

looking down upon the dead as

the dead look upon their own faces

upon beauty that has been ruined

by losing sight of one's own hands

the latchkey is no longer where I left it

the spirit abandons itself to other gestures

these mornings in the cold whiteness of expanse

I find there is just enough room to die in