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Burial of a Boy in 1979 Black, dreamless sky plummeting rain twelve-year-old me pulled from two a.m. sleep dad at my bed. Sobbing (but dad never cries) My best friend killed on our rural road, struck by a driver, he slogged through downpour, woke dad confessed to spaniel slaughter disappeared in deluge Through dark sheets of wet dad gathers the fur snapped lump carries it/her home, digs a hole with […]

THE EMPTY URN how large the moons seems sinking low on the horizon as if weighted by all our sorrow to ride the mountain’s back voiceless silhouette like Quasimodo the hump lasts only a minute then lets go surrendering to dusk how strange our twilight beginnings and final demise ending in the same apothecary blues flecked with stars we open with a flower’s softness take the rain harden like an […]

On a Gurney Lies my Father naked, white, stone cold dead with a disinfectant smell like kerosene. I must identify the body, a man I almost hate, before they cremate. A scientist, he should be burned in a lab coat. When life departs, the body is a basic fact, calm and beautiful. ‘Yes, it’s him,’ I say, though it isn’t. He’s gone. Flesh dies. Spirit lives. Next day from the […]

Begin Again to Rig the Mast In my memory it was more than mother’s ash we delivered to the harbor by the bay, on a warm August eve. It was father who that time needed help to be born, to let go silent cries of grief into the forgiving wind, to breathe deep the scent of pine into his remaining lung, and feel the supple summer breeze swaddle his arthritic […]