On reading an obituary (J Frame)

Tottering edgewards, fingers splayed by threats, or memories;
all of you is cupped and hurled,
up and inwards;
you are they eye of a geyser.

Perhaps this is ascension, boarded and belted –
but sense drops away like an extra motor,
it gets colder closing in to the sun.

You call the ghost town a neighbourhood
elbowing to give a new arrival the grand tour;
three circuits, four.
The dead adore their visitor’s conversation,
allow her to clean the fluids from Peter’s scales.

But you are the one to have rejected the spoils
of that eternal house
to have taken the lies of heaven to the press.