Succession

What vessel will be worthy

             for the flint and bone sediments of you,

                     for the epaulets of loosened then
 
stitched-back skin of you, for the hallways 

             of sinew cleaned now of growth from you?

                     And what boat laps patiently, with no 

insistence on the time to board or the time 

             to depart? We turn back the clocks 

                       as a gesture that means we know

winter is coming. Beneath the dying

             grass, the roots of the next life begin to curl

                         into the storage cells of their survival. 

Now that you are lighter than you've ever been

             in years, what arrow of you shot from what

                          crossbow aims at a velvet box housing

the diadem you'll become? The smallest  

               leaf falls: it  is a shattering in the sky,  a fold

                           of water in the many mouths of the bay.