Wrist Deep

That finger may be gone but I still feel it
coiling in ether, caressing the devil’s tongue,
or ringing the keys from my pocket without success.
That finger may be gone but I still feel it
pushing through the universe’s walls.
Trailing seconds behind my hand like a sickly dog
with a broken necked bird in his slack jaw,
I can sense it cleaving hollow spaces
in the blurred and heavy snowed paths
of my deep periphery. That finger,
that strange appendage, may be gone
but I still feel it; my darkly homage.

The dead are gone. I stand before them in awe.
They are rushing toward us from behind.