Last night I arrived a few minutes before the storm, on the lake the waves slow, a gray froth cresting. Again and again the computer voice said you were disconnected while the wind rattled the motel sign outside my room to gather its nightlong arctic howl, like an orphan moaning in sleep for words in the ceaseless pelting of sleet, the night falling to hold a truce with the dark In the Botticellian stillness of a clear dawn I drove by the backroads to your house, autumn leaves like a school of yellow tails hitting the windshield in a ceremony of bloodletting. Your doorbell rang hollow, I peered through the glass door, for a moment I thought my reflection was you on the otherside, staring back, holding hands to my face. It was only the blurred hold of memory escaping through a field of glass. Under the juniper bush you planted when your wife died, I found the discarded sale sign, and looked for a window where you'd prove me wrong signaling to say it was all a bad joke. As I head back, I see the new owners, pale behind car windows driving to your house, You're gone who knows where, sliced into small portions in the aisles of dust and memory.