Dead man

A dead man finds his way into our hearts
simply by opening the door and walking in.
He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly
about hunting or some bats he saw
on the way over, wheeling around each other.
Look how they spin, he says, it’s like the
ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other
in the space between their bodies.
We mention the eels at the aquarium, how
their bodies knot while mating. The dead man
was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots.
His favorite was the one with the rabbit
and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out
and around the tree. The dead man liked it
because he liked to pretend that the rabbit
was running from a fox, and the rabbit
always ended up safe, back in his hole.