I go out so early the wasps are asleep,
but the birds sound hysterical. I wonder
if I sound the same to others. I must,
since they nod and go on or avoid me
altogether. The heat tamped down by rain
is still unbearable, relief that turns out
not to be much. If it’s July, I imagine
November’s gone leaves. If February,
I think of April’s roadsides, redbud
and then dogwood, always in that order.
As if so easily a structure might be found.
As if the heart and mind securely entwine. 
Everything seems jumbled, one friend 
gone at fifteen, another at forty-one, 
others never having entered my life. 
To whom was I not open? I tried to be
a church door, like the one unlocked
when I was a child visiting relatives 
for the weekend. I’d cross the road, slip 
inside. I had the place to myself. It was 
myself. Vacant. Hymn-haunted. Wordless.
Some people’s words entirely disappear.
Maybe they lived too close to the earth
or too far from the sky, from the wind,
from how an owl lifts off from a limb.
Maybe their emptiness pushed them 
out into nothingness. When my time
comes, I’ll probably be saying a poem
to myself, unable to finish it. It will
just pause, all of eternity its final line.