"...And that's what it's like to be dead she told me ..."

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Richard recommends these on line literary sites.

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Mr. Long

Time in the Garden

And that's what it's like to be dead
she told me, kneeling in the garden,
pointing the stick of her white finger
at the mound of turned over dirt,
while in the whistle of the fading
summer light, a cardinal flashed
in and out of the limbs sagging
with the red juice of the elderberry.
See,she said. The shadow, the black
comfort of a blanket--it covers
what's left of light in the world
I had come out back to give her
a handful of strawberries, each one
no larger than the nail of a little finger.





Chalk

As a child I ate chalk.
Never a crayon or mud.
Look it,granny would laugh,
he's got the ash tongue of the dead.

Later, at a chalkboard,
I heard her laughter
in the diagram of a sentence
or in the dust of the words.

With my hands on the keyboard,
I am haunted by the trace
of my grandmother on the screen
and the look of her chalky face.