With each handful you dead
breathe in, nourished by dirt
by these leaves half stone
half come to a stop –without a breeze
your mouth smells from some quarry
that has no past –you are fed
among flowers and slowly behind
go on eating, adored, immense
seething with mountains
no longer outside, creaking
or far away another bedside
fragrant with lips and whispers.
SIMON PERCHIK is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review,
The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013).
