Four Short Poems / The Same Poem Four Times

On the other hand it's the ghost that haunts you.

Dead things choose us and do not let go.

A man without a parcel is no enigma.

Best to have libraries, whole caravans of

catalogued bodies following you down the mountain.

"Baggage," they say, as if it can be neatly untucked

and sealed away in motel closets.

--

In the photograph your shoulder is whole, immaculate,

glacial as your eventual eyes, hidden as a smile.

My heart has a heart has a heart.

All things, unless anchored, that is to say

tied down, will drift away.

--

If a dead bird is enough to make me forget,

a live one is enough to bring it back.

--

I would have remembered you just before

opening my lungs to let the water in--remembered you

scattering my one-eyed visions. I would have compared

dying to dying while dying. Instead I stood up straight

and puked four times. For you, I thought as the river

pulled it all, swirling, away.