Of A World

If there is touch or heart
instead of dust-balls beneath

the bed or leaves pressed under
foot & boot or splinters wedged

like glass into the flesh, there
will be love and loss and spirit.

Of love, sometimes the dread,
a place of restlessness, of nerve

the quiet dust-balls collecting
hair, lint, fibers beneath the bed.

Of loss, always despair, helpless
despair, the sound of leaves cracking

under weight. And spirit, tiny
sharpened wood, its trillion jagged

pieces, burrows in, disappears
into the body of a world.