ALL GROUND (CHAOTIC PRAYER FOR DAVE II)

after the garden and before the upper tennis court
before the road flattens out but far enough up the crest 
so that you can see the fairway channel 
if you pivot there in the garnet gravel

there is a red portal

walking through the softness and sinking 
the blur declared itself distinct
wild blueberry drama for winter 

i want to tell you 
all about it 

and walking past the garage i also want to tell you
how i still always look for toothless Bill crouching behind the dumpsters 
waiting to scare me with a secret and call you Adonis
behind your back, his slur for daring to pick me up 
in your truck 

well, it wasn't even your truck

but Bill lives traceless in town now, with Judy 
who I thank by blinking when i see her out buying milk
for all the hamburgers and space heaters she gave you 
when you'd come back to the garage 
from the cold 

walking up to the wood pile clearing 
my chest sings to itself: 

I am dead and you are alive 

a deer leaps out to make my heart leap higher 
urgent correction -- the other way around -- 

I am alive and you are dead

but who is alive and who is dead
when i become the angel visiting you 
here in the grass and gravel, here in the everywhere 
dirt 

I remember kissing you and I kiss you still 

steps trudging the pillow mounds
to the old horse shed, eroding bridles and 
ghost nests 

i want to tell you how I learned through a typo text 
that you had killed someone, when really 

you were killed

well isn't that perfect, you’d say, eyes  too 
dancing to roll

how i fell to the far-off manicured grass, mountainless

how the world slipped from its tilt
and flattened

you laying down
me laying down

all ground