--as Billy died,
the space between his breaths got bigger.

and longer,

then three quick breaths
a little gurgling of breath and blood,

then a long silent space
-- and not another breath,

then one more,
and that was it.

His sister weeping,

and something began to move through the room,
as if energy were

rising, like thickening air,
as if spirit were pleasure

pushing through the room, through
even our faces,

a molecular, invisible. . .
If this was Billy

he was so vast—
the way one field leads onto another,

vast to have been contained,
all that time, in that body,

--a nearly unendurable joy
a steady outpouring for over an hour

so that when the men came back from dinner they found
Billy dead in the sheets

and the three of us almost drunkenly smiling.