In like a lion, out like a motherfucker, the month I bought
Selected Poems by Dennis O'Driscoll who died last Christmastime
at 58, who gazes out from the book's back cover
ready to do business, posed casually, hands folded,
nice sport coat and tie, a man who any second
will catch the bus to work. I am driving there and thinking
our lives are like a reality show, the angels are the judges,
no one's ever really voted off until the island
whispers, You, you, for no reason other
than the worms are famished. March, you fucking bastard,
your planetary winds, so cold and businesslike,
make me think that when the Irish poet met his end,
something closed, quietly, bridging truth and myth,
probably a poem we'll never understand.
I hear it as angel wings, I feel their soft confetti.