The Madonna wasn’t just a material girl,
simulating innocence in proper tulle
and hoary makeup, her hands grasping
some weirdly penitent and pockmarked teenager
with an outmoded phrase on his shirt like,
“Frankie says relax” or “L’etat c’est moi”.
She was also this thin wax figurine in Haiti
that cried periodically – but was probably a hoax.
But that voodoo shit was real, so real,
That every movie is a documentary.

Material things are terrible to part with
unlike things as common as
Atman aching in a massive hole in the ground
that you slipped in and found yourself
wading in red Virginia clay.
Still, it didn’t feel as good or as familiar
as it did on the days you did construction near my house
when your Timberlands were talking to me
from where they perched on the aluminum ladder
in a time when death seemed sort of far off
even with disaster knitting heather grey socks
not so far away.