Angela Hibbs - Your Eight Storied Heaven

For Rena

Dante’s book is where we left it.
Not even the wind turns its pages.
I wanted to be limpid
so you could be perfect

and I did it imperfectly
as I wrote your elegy.
Come back when you want to hear
how terribly your floor has warped

how much my spine hurts
under the burden of your books.  I told
you no matter whose nest
we flew to next we’d

be in each other’s brittle bones.
You were listening or reading.
Your guitar neck is unrepaired
make of that what you will.

Nothing is healed.
Just fixed or unfixed.
Your swamp will reclaim us all
no matter what floor of heaven

we descend to.