To Death
by Peter Micic


A border town, once garrisoned by a battalion
encamped at the edge of the clouds,
an eagle, deprived of sleep, and yet,
now at twilight, notices a large flag
held up by a benevolent wind and memory
gradually falling out of the picture, vanishing beyond the
margins of the darkening sky, and a bridge which usually
leads between two rivers, my grandfather gazing at the stars
as if the more you gaze, the more you might understand the
erased, the unsayable, the grass not yet grown
over the grave of his wife,
the many ways to look at life and death
like the many ways a poet might fill a page
or stretch or tighten syllables
assembling beauty that hasn't been loved enough.






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