the new command

Rowan Tate

that said, I've had it

spades, death.

who has come

this far

and not?

who has not passed

the peas and said who died

today, who has not,

who is near,

who went well

and who went

hard, who crumbled,

withered, whose spirits

set the standard,

settled Heaven

like a worn boot,

what or who went back into

it, back into life,

a bather in a sea

of other bathers, wet and raw

and still believing,

seeing earth's morning once

again, the fire of a sun

on sea, the single mountain,

town, the skirts

of women, then –

(ask me how I know you

weren't a wasp

or some low thing.

you walk the world

and look at hate and me and

say, what grace in everything).