When they crumble gently as they leaf
The house flutters like the membrane that it is, tentative
Gesture like a lump humping up from the earth then falling back
As the planet continues with its breathing
Is death returning home some way no one imagines
Setting down the spines and fibers of the flexible material
Till all is level and true finally beyond conceptualization and concatenation
Or is there just the ongoing disturbance of more and more life
Blot on the sheer fabric of nothing?
This poem appears in Norman Fischer, Charlotte's Way (Kane`ohe, HI: TinFish Press, 2008).