Simon Perchik’s most recent poem to appear here is “and though it’s dark these dead” (January 2018).

You listen the way this stone
senses when its prey
no longer has a pulse

and swallows it whole
though your ears work like that
widen for the embrace

and quiet that afternoon
still wandering the Earth
as rain and those pebbles

a child finds on the beach
—one by one tossed at the sun
or something in between

taking so long to die—what you hear
is losing its breath
is crumbling and in your arms.