End of My Rope

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END OF MY ROPE


Evidently we’ve miscalculated

the coordinates: the end 


of ourselves is miles further 

than we imagined on setting out.


Don’t leave it out: We won’t be back 

in time for dinner. And to consider 


that tangle once passed for a garden

is to admit we didn’t yet unearth 


the mother-weed. Wash the linens 

and scrub the baseboards 


till our knees bleed, in the morning 

the newest offspring goes 


skittering across the sheets. 

There may have been a death,

 

and it may have been real 

enough, but the dead are now 


waking us from sleep as they knock 

at the door and invite us to come 


with them into the dark dawning

of a world with always more dying to do.


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