What Measure Ye Mete

for Natalie Marti

The last thing she saw
before life was seized
from her bloody and loud
(that is to say lives—
a joy herky six month girl
and a husband who
in the mornings sang)
were yellow cylinder
headlights arcing
a drunken plane
filling her view
wide eyes fixed
in their sockets
grainy irises alight in
brightening spheres
pupils pinching fast
into needle heads
the world gone white
casting behind her family
for the briefest moment
the shadows of all
that would never be

Judging after a decade
the wreckage of that night
I recall early Idaho mornings
late harvest coming on
sitting at the table
glass in hand
watching dust float
in a column of sunlight
unseeable otherwise
like the molecules
of an existence warming
sure and steady towards
some far off boiling point
And no considered
amount of blinking
or neck contortion or weeping
can wash my eyes of
those beams boring
into her skull
kindling in their shafts
rays of motes now impossibly
big, adrift in their long
unpredictable bearings