The Widows of Gravesend

It is told & it is told & it is told again.
Whispered in the kitchen by women
dividing violets,
separating beans from stones.
There came a man then
walking in his father's shoes
who heard the three dogs barking by the stream
& at the crossroads
owned neither by this woman nor that man
saw two white horses in a line
& said, "Yes, I am a wanderer in my own land."

Who are you anyway?
An old crow fallen among gold apples?
A man shaving his father's face in the mirror?
Naked under the white sow of the moon
with only the fakebook of Beauty for feeling,
you think, What is my life?
A dog abandoned at the end of summer?
A walk in the rain?
I have lived with my body so long, is it not my soul?
Sadness tunes the instrument.
There is a chill on everything.
You feel the surge, the violent momentum of
emptiness filling immense forms,
energy frozen in each cell,
the snowplow in a sea of waves spellbound by starlight.

Night, night,
sweetest sister, weary river flowing on,
who will sing all our tomorrows?
The lucky ones who continue to live having nothing?