Love Poem

            “all is temporary as a perfect haircut…”
                                 - Dean Young           


My grandfather died
the way that spring blooms

palms open, all cold
and full of nothing.

And always I can hear
his ghost calling to me,

crying from under snow-in,
from the bury of forget

and from the heavy hurting
of all over and again.

He says scientists should give in
the way wick weakens,

for all flames eat candle through.
He says, stop trying, surrender

to the inevitable, to facts. Frozen,
he says, means simply

stop. He reminds me
what remain really means:

Left behind. All of us,
we are dying. Eternity,

a porch gone bare
with the steps all but burned

in the blur of winter.
Eternity is a place only

for scientists and for scissors,
for screams.

Eternity gulps deep and breathes
I am no longer. Eternity exhales

I always will.