Memorial Service

Can you believe how many songs have been committed to stone & none to the water that wears it down? How many lines get lifted from the surf– & none from the living ocean? I was the dead girl who lay in the coffin with her corona of hair cut short. I wasn’t listening to that stranger whose hands held their fire, whose teeth trapped dust. But when the women one by one stood up to testify I heard the first rumor of rain. It was as if I’d awakened precipitously in the night, forehead filled with mist & the dreams still crowding close. I push them back

& blink, remembering– recalling my role. I was the nice guy who never refused to buy a six-pack for a teenage drunk (even though that night it had been someone else’s turn) & now I’m sitting in the back with my feet tucked under my chair, alert to the slow dripping of grief & the ripped tissue cradled by uncertain fingers.

A song can sag on the page, consigned to some abstract solar kingdom more inviolable than a tomb. A river can lie down behind levees, drained and channeled to hold the flood in check. Who then will bear witness to the current, the profligate flow? She was always so full of spirit, says the neighbor lady. It’s hard to believe.