When You Die

When you die you go away and you lose it all, that's

The bitterest severance ever.

You think you lost a lot when he left you? Think again.

Everything's gone now, the tight stone house, its narrow

rooms.

You're a dispossessed. ghost;

All the mail's for someone else.

You've reached

The place with no name, the unlabeled end of the street,

Stony road.

You go by your friend's house but her windows are

locked and shuttered, her husband's in the car

outside, waiting,

Her children are waiting. She comes down the steps

holding

Tickets. She looks in your direction as if there were

something she should be doing,

She walks by you abstractedly,

Checking her watch.