You
Some of you drifted down.
A gentle grey dispersing,
something like shell grit sifting
along the sea floor.
Three gar fish swam by.
They were not curious about
the presence of the scorched particles
of your bones, your organs, flesh.
You were not there.
Us
The food came slowly,
so slowly, that what we imagined
would be a gathering, a swim and deftly homewards,
became a saga.
At the next table
sang happy birthday,
to a two year old.
My brothers decided
to scatter some more of you,
the following day, or perhaps the day after,
As if what mattered was their agreement
rather than your wishes.
I said I would say something
about you. My brother said, “Not anything too loud,
it would be embarrassing.”
So I said nothing,
an unfamiliar knot of rage,
burning in my gut.
Brother 1
One brother, said I had something in my eye
it rubbed away like grit, like sand, bit’s of shell.
I thought about leaving it, this bit of my own crust,
extruded and condensed. Both me and not me.
Both you and not you.
My other brother poked about finally
in the box holding what remained.
He had taken us up some back stairs,
Behind the beach, half way up,
that wound through shards of light, overhung green,
passing parrots, plucked steel keys
brightly, and he said, “It’s all compacted”
and got cross about the public
all stood below.
You poured out, though stubbornly
And a fine nimbus formed around the jars neck,
We were breathing you again.
He was concerned about your dignity
but I thought his own, some fine nimbus of sensitivity
formed around his neck, which I might have throttled.
But I had not throttled you, twenty years into your senility,
despite your having asked if someone kindly would,
then later, plaintively, one rainy afternoon visit,
Almost polite, you asked me
not to be murdered.
He seemed perturbed,
to open what he had carefully packaged,
didn’t want to disturb the artificial
rose on top, or poke a hole in the paper,
but ripped away at the scotch tape
he had sealed you in with.
I offered my car key, and we sawed
through, our fingers scrabbling
with a kind of plucking motion,
at the layers of tape as if
we were playing a lute.
Your Friend
By the time we got back
your old friend,
had wondered off home.
Her husband flew model planes in his retirement,
Saying it had taken years to learn.
But now he dreamed of flying them too.
I had first listened, then dreamed,
As if awaiting you to awake.
I
I swam out, Penny partnering my strokes,
my right hand holding some of you, wrapped up
in newspaper, as if you were fish and chips,
returned for holidays to the gulls and sea.
Long water broke left on the point,
where you had swum and bathed in rippling sun,
had basked full bodied in the null and absolute
certainty, of mere mortality, the zero sum of all
that quiet breeze, beach palms
and the slow settling of (y)our
being undone.
