Death’s Daughter

lives in Dingle

her flaxen braids
unravel in the breeze

she’s the dream,
green-eyed

she has dug a tunnel
to China

she’s nothing
but firm lines and honesty

she lives upside down
in Australia

she’s as thin as a ghost
and as sweet

she lives in the mirror
just out of sight

she sings
cockles and mussels,
alive, alive o

in the fall
she fills the bed with leaves.

she sings
of the high road and the low
and where o where can my baby be?

she loosens the gold powder
from your store-bought flowers,

fingers half a heart
on a frozen window

she’s the perfect one,
of which Death will not speak