David

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say here doth lie .. . 
his best piece of poetry — 
Ben Jonson, On My First Son 

This blade of stone 
cuts the grass 
to the quick. 

The stonecutter laid 
it down 
a perfect rectangle 
of prose 

a cover closing on 
an empty page of flesh. 

(the vision of all 
as a book that is sealed) 

Eating apples 
I study psalms here, idly 
dream of your linens 
folding eastward 
like new leaves, 
of stone peeling back 
in some fierce unruly 
Dawn, 

(and save ourselves with 
all 
our 
dead) 

your skin white as the meat 
of an elm, limbs 
adance in a final 
polyphony of light. 

I drop a core into 
the grass, entreating: 
O flesh, outlast this page, 
O bone, outsing this poem.