Pale Rider

                  for Jim Carroll

So it ends with the murmur of
brooding guitars
beneath the bleached-out horizon
drowning the vacant room left
exactly as we found it
where we traded fear for numb surprise

between the two the lesser majesty

chemical dings in the Upanishads

We ask for nothing but a blank page
& the rest maybe wingless
but true enough
the death of poetry like the death of anything
leaves an empty page
white as the sky right now above the beach
like where we were from the beginning