The Man Who Can Only Paint Death

A man who does not believe in women

believes in death.

He has painted it rising with bone wings

over the dark of his house.

He has sung to it in a pale monotone.

He has stroked its hair.

But his hand comes back covered with cobwebs

& his throat fills with dust.

The bone wings creak when he raises his brush.

His wife turns in her bed.

He dreams of his mother's grave going to seed.

He smells the dust of her hair.

He is the gray flower which grows

between her headstone & the sky.

He is the weed in the paving crack.

He is the baby in black.

His daughter turns & turns in her sleep.

Her eyelids move with dreams.

She dreams she awakens & finds him gone,

& her grandmother's name is death.