After Grave Illness

The body has two seasons
and doesn’t exist to be changed;
it itself changes—as moths come into a field,
then the hunted deer.
Who knows from the outside
where death grows?

A man rubs his eyes as if to recover
some first sight. Clouds scuttle.
There is rain; there’s snow;
a northerly wind crushing in its teeth
the year’s seeds.
He is pushed inside
out like a glove showing its lining.
Things simply are.