These may be the edges of a long gloom—
Dr. Pfeil, OD, gangly harbinger of shadows

promises new ways of seeing, the comfort
of modern technology, but he too knows

the shadows will begin at the edges.
The cells, the ganglia cells, are dying,

everything is dying—I write the litany
of my inheritance: a grandfather in 1940

falling into gloom before the valley
of the shadow; another in 1975, he too calling

for a bowl of water to rinse his fingers before,
before, before feeling for the lips and eyes

of the grandchild, amazed at the intimacy
of sightlessness, these substances of the dark

we imagine; and now you, Mama, in your closing
shadows, waiting for a sound for silence,

how deep inside your blood you live,
these days. I crowd my days with the depression

of novelists, those who have forgotten
how to laugh, and the day turns to night.

Clocked out so long ago, as if the color red
has lost its anger. This is September.

The emptiness stretches towards the Nebraska
horizon, the constant oppression of sky.