Literal
I walk my dog
a different route
to avoid the dog
with no personality.
We cut through
the parking lot
of the Elks Club
that will prosecute
if we linger; take
a right at the Virgin
on the corner —
hey, girl.
It’s 63 degrees: sunny, salt-
breeze and floral —
like it’s possible to be
in love sometimes.
My friend wants
to retire, but re-
fuses to use that
word. It means the next
thing you do is die.
I don’t tell her
another word won’t
save her. I worry
why I’m scared,
again, of parallel
parking. A jogger says
my dog is a cutie.
Her name’s Alice Neel,
but she doesn’t get
the reference. I don’t
care because greatness
often goes unnoticed.
I gave her
a Benadryl before the walk —
the preacher was
weed eating across the street;
he’s handsome
because he’s young
and believes nothing
in this life matters. His
daughter wears
a skirt over jeans
when she plays. There’s
a word spelled wrong
on their church sign.
I pick up after my dog
except when I don’t,
which is late at night
or when I’m mad at
everyone and hope any-
one will step in it.
My neighbor records
everyone through her
window without posting
a sign. We hope she’ll
die, which isn’t terrible
to say, if you know her.
My friend texts she’s
sitting by water in the
town where they killed
witches who weren’t
witches and it shouldn’t
matter if they were. She’s
staring at three lighthouses
on the horizon — she thinks
more of the same thing
ties us to reality. She knows
nothing bad can happen
on a day like this.
* * * * *
What Is That Song You Sing for the Dead?
Not “Amazing Grace,” so tired the sound, and who wants
ten thousand tedious years? “When We All Get to Heaven,”
but that’s too happy, and people might think you wanted your mom
to die. By the time the third person says she’s in a better place,
you’ll want to rip somebody’s face off. “Til the Storm Passes By”?
Her dad used to sing that in church Sunday mornings,
and when he started to weep, your sister carried the tune
while she played piano. Maybe something funny, unexpected —
she liked to laugh, but probably not: she had respect for ceremony.
Your sister always joked: mom loves her some funeral. No Elvis
even though she told you she named you after him. Of course,
her friends will play the one she asked for: Peter and Joan
will drive from North Carolina, two-part harmony with guitar.
Mom told you the name of the song last August before you left.
When you hear it, she said, I want you to think of me in the wind
through the trees. You told her not to be “maudlin,” a word
you can’t remember ever using in a sentence, because you didn’t
want to talk about her death. You’ve spent your whole life
trying to write hard truths, but failed your mother when she needed
to tell her own. You won’t be able to listen to that song
for years. You could write something new: one with the two of you
crammed in the basement rocking chair when you were five
and she held you down to cut your toenails while you squirmed
and giggled, and she giggled but got it done, even the little toe.
A song with cookies made with Crisco, not butter, and extra flour.
The hum of a window air-conditioner you heard nights you and your
sister slept in the cool on your parents’ bedroom floor. “The bus
is on the hill,” a chorus over and over those winter mornings
she rushed you out of the house for school. But you’ve never been
able to write a song, and you’re old enough, broken enough
to know that a whole life can’t fit into one, a whole life can’t fit
into a life. Remember the night years ago when she stood
in the front yard in her nightgown and your father’s hunting boots.
She wanted to see the comet that appears only every seventy-five
years because she knew she wouldn’t be alive the next time.
She said, I think that’s it, and pointed up — the whole-note stars,
the yard beneath muddy and humming.
* * * * *
Last Ocean
Where was she those final two days
after we brought her home? The body
we knew her in, loved her in was there,
but where was she? Still inside listening?
Looking inward toward light or dark
that I have to believe not scary?
It’s so easy to die and so hard.
And the morphine. And the lying
beside her, and the calm
I didn’t think I’d feel, the paying
attention, trying to soak in all of her.
She woke up once, stretched her arms,
not above her head, but down, like someone
waking from a nap surprised
they fell asleep in early dusk. She’d told
my sister weeks before she didn’t want to go:
your dad doesn’t even know how to fold a towel.
Somehow, we knew to gather around, knew
it was about to happen. My friend believes
when people die, for a brief moment,
they understand everything about everything
and love encompasses them. I don’t know
if I believe that, but today I want to —
looking at the picture I took of her
on vacation when she stood on the shore
of her last ocean—her feet sometimes
covered in water and always, until she
came back to us, sinking in sand.