Landing

,

.

In Jerusalem a dead phone’s dialed by exiles.

—Agha Shahid Ali, “By Exiles”

1

In a litany of safer places, we name hospitals,

highways, runways, where a body

is at least in motion. Sticking

hard to its own fable,

something simple about linen

and penmanship. The whole heart’s

at work there, drawing dirt

from a garden of artichokes

for the eventual burial, far

from home, against a quieted sky.

2

The body and its constituent bones cross

dark oceans. These have names

and take up most of the globe. Still,

they are standing in. Its smells

and inconstancies, its unwilled dissolutions,

leave our hands empty, leave our hands.

3

Our bodies go down

unwrapped, or all in white.