Poet's Choice

Each spectral port,

each human eye

is shot through with a hole, and everything we know

goes in there, where it feeds a blaze. In a flash

the baby's old; Mel Gibson's hundredth comeback seems

less clever; all his chases and embraces

narrow down, while we

fly on (in our

plain radiance of vehicle)

toward what cannot stay small forever.

At the end, "what cannot stay small forever" becomes not just the size of Spokane, but the pin dot of light that a near-death survivor swims toward.

McHugh's new elegy begins at the graveside, where she has added three spades of earth, rather than the two everyone else hefts.