You don’t read how weak it was
though this windtorn composition book
steadies its lettering for afternoons

the way beginners wave their arms
making room for the Honor Roll
mixed with stone, not yet the pages

–these dead are used to it :words
put together by a still warm crayon
and you too no longer move

leave them nothing except an afterall
in writing and on these sheets
hillsides to fit inside your name

holding it between your fingers, higher
and from the struggling dirt, over and over
making mountains, clocks, emptiness.