The wind dives into you, as if
you are a pinwheel. (See Magritte,
The Human Condition.) A man's soft eyes shine
just as you duck around the corner;

take the cuts, side streets, and narrow corridors,
the hallway of sighs and long melancholic laughter.
The broad streets are planned
for parades, marches, commerce; history's
sunny bombast, the long whine

against decline. Walk past the bar, the realtor, the florist,
the biker's hangout, the body specialist,
the pre-school. Landscapes of leaves
and glittery handprints press against the glass.
This road denoues at the cemetery.

Hurry on, the gates will shut
at sunset. You choose left
where the arrow suggests
Home of Eternity.

Leopold Lion has three epitaphs:
white quartz, opaque and solid
like spirits caught in glass,
1900 - 1987.

Each date is a deep incision.

For Annie Levine, twenty-eight
last September, these talismans
against the giver's heartbreak:
XOXO. Unicorns, crystals, lipgloss,
a sighing blue tit of a firework.

The scintillant pinwheel spins its arms,
graceful and automatic, a rotary dial
wheeling to eternity.

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