Sample Poems by Zan Bockes

---

Meditation on Dust

I begin by breathing.
Soft and gray, the room
hangs within the pane-framed
sky. I erase
the traces of the day, the minutes
sifted across the ledge
by the tireless ebb
of time, trailing
the uncut thread-
life beyond measure.
Here and now
I glide among the relics,
treasure these heartbeats
rising inside my ribs-
the moments they mark,
singular and together
in shifting light. I breathe
my being into the silver
motes, worlds so open
I find myself
suspended,
moving as they must
through the dust
of my remains.

---

Vigil
(for Zander, 6/21/88 to 8/9/07)

Still, the slatted light
lingers in this faded room,
the blind shadows
spread across the bed
where you lie dying.
I know I need
to let you go, but
not yet.

The days blur and dwindle,
the promise of survival
leaking away with evening.

Once an orange kitten,
you laid your paw
on my cheek, purring
as I breathed, sustaining me
when I wished for death myself.

Now I fear to leave
your side, do not want
your soul to take flight
without my eyes to catch it,
without my hand
in your rumpled fur
easing your slip
into memory.

Your eyes turn distant,
your mouth opens, yet
your ribs still rise and fall-


rise again
fall again,
rise...

Is this your last breath?

This?

---

Chronology of a Friend's Death

You made the decision
while I was in Denver,
where I tapped fingers rapidly
on the arm of an airport chair,
waiting for my flight.
It was 1 p.m., and I was impatient.
So, my dear, were you.

By 2:00 you'd written the note:
"I hope everyone can forgive me
for doing this." As I trooped down
the ramp for the Omaha plane,
I forgave everything
in the interest of living
in the interest of just getting back
all right.

While you started your car
I was on the runway, hammering
down white light with sweating
hands, and at the moment
we lifted off, the big world
disappeared behind your mother's
garage door. The cool garage
was quiet but for the comfortable
purring of your car and your own thoughts,
falling in your mind like coins
of lead.

Over Nebraska, over the dials of farms
and patchwork fields, we flew through clouds
stacked miles high, white anvils
standing in the sky as if

to prove something. I might have seen
your soul fly up, a thin green thing
like a balloon, rising through
the cauliflower clouds-a speck,
a lens from a pair of broken
sunglasses. But I paid
no heed-it was only my eyes,
and I wasn't even
thinking of you.

When we touched ground near 5:00
I felt in every part of me
the slam of sky hitting earth
and your mother's discovery
and the sense of an end
where something else begins.

---

For the Lost

You've been turning right
at every corner; the sooty night

tangles your hair. If the moon were out
you'd be making wishes, but doubt

strings lines across your eyes,
makes neon signs a disguise

for gold. The wind is so cold it cuts
like dry ice wires, struts

and whips the newspapers down
the street in rolling stampede. You drown

your teeth in Old Crow, bite
the sorrow on your tongue in two, tight

as a clenching fist. St. Anthony knows
your lyric rambles, knows the wind owes

you money. The empty streets are long
tonight; this wind, a bitter song.