Light snow falling in the listening
area, something has to keep me from
the radio and other forms of incidental
contact like The current time is
or I see silver plunging in the days ahead.
Why not poetry? AM clouds give way
to PM sun. I wish I’d written that
and did, and publish it on air
the way a match publishes in my hand

before I hold it to the cigarette I took
from my first teacher’s son in light
snow at her improvised wake, contract
pneumonia there, let it bloom
in the left lung for a while, then postpone
Berlin. I discourage you from flying
is the nicest thing anyone has ever
except maybe the command to look
alive when I was a boy undead among

small purple flowers in the outfield.
The plan was to wander around Kreuzberg
mourning, but this will do: overheard
forecasts, adjustments to internal
flora, light snow that turns to rain in time,
just not for anything. If you turn
literally inward, touch the breastbone
with radiation, locate a shadow, then
the tech will print you out an image, freeing

up the elegy for other things, like wandering
beyond the field of play while bases
empty. (They’re talking about the off-season,
beautiful phrase that’s mine and now
it’s gone.) Cornflower, bluebottle,
the involucre is urn-shaped and the margins
irregularly cleft. Thrives on roadsides,
thrives on waste sites, is sometimes
toothed or lobed.