Death is a white cotton shirt, draw string, slippers. That corridor ahead is tiled with footsteps of the vanished, each thought a twelve inch square. Death is a stainless table, a clean sheet folded down sharp as a military bunk. But your eyes are in the treetops now. The Lord blinks in the Texas sun, a smoke on the tailgate, his pickup by the side door idling.
Night is a man in black leather shoes.
He is kind to you, you'll be human for some minutes yet. His smile's a passport on the night train, a cold water. He tightens the straps where the needles go, one in each arm, a fearsome symmetry close to beauty. Straps on your ankles, across your chest, as if the soul might drag the body with it. The body stays.