"Postscripts"
After the cremation, her ex-husband broke
his promise. Instead of scattering her ashes
among the manzanita and pine
of the Laguna Mountains, he hid them
in a locker under his bed, as if one last time
he might possess her.
My needs were not with ashes.
I would take my long late-night walks
and talk out loud to her: “If you can hear me,
show me a sign.”
How many men have made this request,
then spent their morrows waiting for reply? –
the moon balanced on a church steeple,
a voice – so much like hers! – mumbling
in the wind like the murmur at the entrance
to a cave, or the lost one’s favorite
John Denver song slipping from the radio
in a used book store at the same instant
that her beloved Cat’s Cradle leaps
into the mourner’s startled hand.
A universe of ears could hear my petition,
but a universe of mouths had nothing to say.
So the entreaty got filed away with all
the child’s prayers which came to naught:
the bicycles unreceived, the acne that still
clung to my face like barnacles, the pleas
for my parents to stop fighting.
A whole cosmos with a tongue the cat got.
Every few months I’ve asked her daughter
about the ashes, and lately heard her Ex’s
health is failing. Soon my love will spring
from the urn, and spill upon the earth.
© 2007 Fred Longworth
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