Subtracting One Poem by W.M. Rivera

Subtracting One
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Subtracting One
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Verhaeren crushed rushing to board a train.
Rilke's agony pricked by a garden's thorn.
It's not the unexpected haunts us.

The source of our sorrows is what's known:
the inexorable cut-off from meaning,
how seasons turn, what openings disclose,

the vistas of departing trains,
the smallest cut that kills, amazing
how sameness changes.

I recollect O'Hara, a ruptured liver,
struck by a dune buggy.

No, it's not the unexpected. What's meant
is the devil in the flesh,
the layers of dust between index and thumb.