There is a farm in Tennessee

There is a farm in Tennessee
where bodies teach other bodies
how to decompose. We went there
on a field trip once and we saw
a man and a woman cut open naked
on the too-clean table. Do you
feel the same as I do when I mourn
their dissolution as lonely as
the distance between I and you
as the emptiness of grass between
the two fenced enclosures of our
minds? The death rate (that
final difference) is 100% if you
wait long enough. Do you know
that quote? It’s true. Everything
ends and we tell ourselves
everything begins too. Not because
it’s true (of course it is) but
because we can look over the fences
into the fields and past those
we can see the mountains looming.