It was supposed to be you, anthem-
chested, totem-armed you. I was supposed
to hop a Southwest flight to Tennessee
and drop the return ticket into the Cumberland. 
I was supposed to gingham-dance

beneath your strings of fireflies and hum
like your guitar when you spoke.
In some other world, close as cousins
to our own, I wake up in your bed,
the one you found the rattler under,

and lose half the dawn to the arch
of your brow. Oh Gabriel. Herder
of stumbling boys. Keeper of the finding
promise. Husband of lives gone
into the river. I wagered one sweet evening

and lost. You drifted, one word at a time,
into a Nashville myth, into a good story
about how a whole band once asked

me to dance. No lie. This is my favorite
disappointment. When I take the stairs down

to the root cellar of my inventoried songs,
I still find a small corner of honey bleeding
your name. Not everything that returns to you
stays, does it? Sometimes we brush
against an overjoyed relief, a barn dance

of recognition, a jewel of a man who walks
you to your car in his socks. And for one 
brief moment we know how the story
ends. I hold that moment like the body 
holds its own end. A careful and patient

weight in the small of my back, the last
placed you touched, leaving me.