Not like this

I don’t want to go like this.

When I see my loved ones' fluids leak

like the garden's rotting fruit.

What misery in that slow retreat.

I pray for speed, for quick.

My mass, my final moment

freed freed freed

in a single sudden trick

To the bay

Blue, cobalt bay with your secret bottom,

I stand before you in the golden hay,

upright and awed,

looking without thought, without choice,

with only one this: love

at your blue dome,

at the clean gurgle of your perfect

blueness splashing

every part of me in the motion

of wind and I gulping light of gold

and feeling sorrows sinking

all of me bowing

to that healing unknown.
.

The body shines

The body shines on the table.
Pure as a figure carved atop a tomb.

Not a tremor, not a twitch, no stirring,
eyes stay gummed shut.

Bloodless, still as stone, my husband now.

The table raised and bathed, scents
burned for sacrifice

and  a lone chair for me.

All for one purpose: to look.
The looking--and the being looked at--
this is the ceremony.

I look as would a lit candle,
the earth's wick burning down inside me,

still inside him, too, but only hot in me.

finally

finally! there's a beach
in sight

finally! against my back
a panting wind

finally! from my palms
the sand now bleeds

finally! a world of swells rush
toward me

finally! a bridge of bluffs rust
in sundown glow

finally! foam whirls
like candy floss

finally! in the glorious wake
fear floats belly up