It’s So Hard to Move On

Where Somebody Died:

The self  refuses to appear

         in this bare place.

It fears that mute chair

         and the still window.

The sunlight scares it.

There might rise up a sound.

The door doesn’t like to move,

         and the crow out there

         hesitates; he knows

         a hole flown into by mistake

         would make a bite of   him.

What was sits standstill in the chair,

         hangs, stunned, against the dry-eyed light.

Nobody in sight.

Inanimate things, still  lifeless.

This room’s so empty

         I doubt I’m standing here;

         there can’t be room for me

         and total emptiness.

Only some far-off sounds persist.

The brute truck

         over the interstate.

The flames in the incinerator

         chewing his old vests.

Eleanor Ross Taylor.