You Are My Destination and Desire, Fading

I woke up last night around 2:30 thinking of a poem. Now, mind you, not just any poem, but a poem by one of my favorite poets, James Tate. I searched my book cases for the book I had in mind and found it, Distance from Loved Ones. So here goes: a poem Dan was thinking of in the middle of the night.

You Are My Destination and Desire, Fading
by James Tate

Dawn animal, why don’t you come out now
and have a nice cuppa?
I am reading the obituaries, strenuously,
which is what one does to get ready.
I am counting the fissures in my egg.
We could go to the islands,
the netherworld full of coral,
and have our portraits painted
in feathers and mud—I know this betokens
a kinship too rickety, or even sizzling, for you.
Mammoths walked there a decade ago,
lonely, tottering along the channels.
They looked at their thumbs and shrugged.
They took out their brains and hurled them
into the reefs. I’m holding a crust of bread
in my palm, I see our initials rising
from the lithosphere, a couple of pinpoints
of utility needed elsewhere, and I remember
how to cry, and I remember you, my last kin.