Nights, you visit the bar, stay too late.
Beer, mirrors, news of the shooting
between innings on the lone TV.

Your shirt has become too tight in the belly.
You suck it in, remember how thin
your father was when the cancer tore

through, caught in the fatty brown pause
of an eternal Good Friday—last year’s
grass in bales, this year’s grass kept

under veil. On the long walk home,
you feel overwhelmed, wonder how
you’ll sneak through the door without

waking the house. You don’t want to
face it. Only want to get away
with it, just one more time.

It’s so late the stars have grown faint.
Looking up for the moon, you stumble,
and there’s that guy with the tight shirt,

a belly full of beer, caught between
innings, spilled out like a wallet
on the shoulder of the road. You kneel

in the gravel. You’re tired of all this.
The slurry scent coming in from the pasture
slaps your nostrils. You take up

the weight and set his body down
just over the rise. It’s a small yard,
the kind you see in the country—

white fence, a few stones,
fresh clover under foot—
the sky growing lighter.

Sometimes the power
winks out

in your train car.

You know how
the lights can just go

and the heat

quits too as quiet
falls—everybody looking

for what was.