An obituary
is a door
for strangers
tangent to
the ladder
I borrowed
to hang
pears back
on trees.
The fire
my friend
escaped
in 1993
down a ladder
writes sym-
pathy cards
to the fire
I borrowed
that hurts
strangers.
A trusted cad-
ence braids
colicky trees,
shifting the
seas to a
Texas spring,
the mark of
an unlocked
door washed
ashore, the
colorless words
bait and switch
a pyriform sum-
mation of life.
