It’s one of those days since he died when

I see people in the crowd who look like friends  
from two thousand miles away.  
                                    There’s a profile like Judy’s 
with the same austere short hair and deep-set eyes. 
I catch myself tearing up. 
                                    Look, the neighbor boy Ian 
stands by the fountain, no matter he’s now grown 
and works in Hollywood. 
                                    The Mexican polka band 
has no tuba but a plugged-in keyboard oom-pahs- 
oom-pahs. When the singer 
                                    turns he is my poetry prof 
who learned remote viewing at the Monroe Institute 
and still plays chess. 
                                    No one looks like my Tom. 
A forgotten librarian salsas by double time 
in this audience of dancers. 
                                    Floating crowd faces multiply                        
inside my mind like wet petals—apparitions 
of long-term grief. 
                                    It’s one of those days.  
You, Reader, pass by and look familiar even though 
we do not touch. 
                                    We have never even met.

Sitting deeply in grief,  
in deep grief and mourning  
morning and night.

The knights nowhere  
to be seen. Sight  
is a witness, complicit. 

From minarets and church pits,  
we illicit faith. The eve  
of Christ’s birth 

almost here. Hear the Earth  
as it receives the body’s  
soft and exposed tissues, the heart 

hard as a rock, the rock no longer 
figurative. We lost even  
the figures of our children. The outline 

of a body, jagged front line,  
bulldozed memory. Our eyes open  
to the mouth of a weapon. 

Someone, somewhere, is playing  
the violin in the background  
of violence.

Before all of this, we didn’t think    
too often of heaven. We wanted to fly  
through clouds, not above them. 

We’d lift gin from your mother’s cabinet  
and walk the hallways of Robert Asp Middle  
taking swigs in plain sight from a 20 oz  
Pepsi Clear, your gap tooth flashing  
at teachers we passed, your hands forgetting  
to pass the bottle, screwing and unscrewing  
the cap. After that I moved. We lost track.  
The news was six months old by the time  
I heard. When they don’t say what happened  
you know what happened. We used to catch  
rides from highschoolers out to the Red to jump  
the bridge. Water thick with clay. Red with clay.  
We kept close watch for underwater logs.  
Smoked Menthols. A 40-foot drop into swirls  
of currents. One time you stayed under  
and kicked downstream to trick me. Nervous,  
I stared at the surface for signs. No signs.  
I stumbled down the bank to dive in.  
The moment you were certain you had me  
the valley cracked with your laughter.