what the heart knows in a hole

this stone my heart
has been stopped
it has been dead
before- loam lengthened in
the long hours
bleached white, before
the awkward moon
time like bone growth-
proves painful & surprising
all along the river
has pruned the night
of its being and
this world
knows nothing else-
but the echo of coins
falling from hands
fortunes gone and all
its shallow documentation
for the marriage
of the living and the dead
dealt with in parlors neat
as loves woven nest,
yet the dead want
their song of ash,
their compact of dust
to ring the mind
and balsa fear, it
is pure mission of
the generations to
float this catastrophe
through each human
estuary until it
joins the silent chorus,
the evocation of being and not,
the soul shifts its ragging
disposition and nears
recuperation to eventual
disappearing in to
the wage of every day.