“From Thy Dead Lips”
There’s just a hollowness that has your smell
Around it—like an aura of the sins
We never did together. This shell,
Its fan form, waits, on shores where death begins
(If death can righteously be said to mark
A start). The light around this empty shape
Is pretty like a fragrance, or a shark
Fin made of ambergris. But, if we scrape
This, evil is its lambent, see-through white.
Abandonment is cast like this. Its scent
Bows out in palest grimness like the blight
Of loss. Its short-term product is lament.
My long-term hope is for a blanked out peace,
A formless frankincense that Christ makes cease.