Sometimes

I feel her eyes
black and condemning
burning through mine
though she is dead.
My brown study
is fixed on anything--
a weather report,
a misnumbered footnote,
a video from 1974,
Nixon has resigned--
whereon she hath rejoiced.

Hers was fixed on me and through
her, her father.
It is now a decade since
I held her hand, watched her
eyes go from light to dull
the smart brain tissued.
I had never seen death closely.
I had seen grandfathers in caskets;
I had wailed with German uncles
Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine
in puerile spasms of feigned grief,
not even knowing
my grandfather’s brothers.

But now
the dead light
glows like lit coal
in my eyes
perpetually.