Death at the Lakeshore

Truth be told, I took the job for the perks—

deathlessness, mostly—and wound up afoot

in the heart of the day in my black ankle-top

Converse All Stars, shepherding the good

and the fucked to places I couldn’t believe

where gargoyles sing “Imagine” a capella.

Bookkeeping and scheduling are daunting,

but I can’t hold their tardiness against them.

On the lakeshore, wind has a close voice

that reshapes dissatisfactions. This morning

it shuffled pages of the Cleveland Plain Dealer—

the sports section feature on Browns football.

The geese waddle-walked on the newspaper

in a light that says what happens is random

and a few loops and knots of enduring time

you enter to leave forever. I come for them.

There really is no such thing as dying well.

I may hear inanities like I smell chocolate

or I need to drive to a grocery tomorrow

or I’m not the only one naked in the room

and then they simply stop breathing. Those

alive in autumn by a lake will want to exit

in September, the sugar maples reddening

as a group before mislaying their leaves.