I am trying to sing a clearer song, don’t go.
But the wind is a crook,
it steals my words away. And the snow comes down like laundry
through the chute, comes down like comets trailing sheets of gas,
like spiders on their silver strings.
The sun—strung down
*
hours ago, and on the bed with the last gas lamps on dim,
I felt my body leave. The loved ones gathered around—
sang songs into a cold draft,
wrung their kerchiefs, crossed
my fingers and prayed for a final gasp
of day, the last twitch
in the thick muscle at my shoulder blade. Lord, Lord,
*
a divinity was lost in this room.
It is so easy to sing a perfect dirge
for another, but I can’t praise you properly, can’t sing my gratitude
in notes. I spill myself clumsily, like snows under the door
with the wind.
*
Won’t someone come forward and take over this song?
Won’t a person of authority?
Won’t you, thin-fingered
divinity, with all you grace and snow?
--Kevin Prufer, 2002