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- The Day We Buried You in the
Park
- If you
want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
-
--Walt Whitman
-
- The day we buried you in the
park
- I couldn’t say no. Your wife had
a plan,
- revealed on the phone with the
hush of conspiracy;
- there are laws in this city
against the interment
- of human remains in public
spaces.
-
- This was the Poets’ Park, your
vision
- floating like the black
butterflies of cinders
- over the house in ruins across
the street.
- You and Juan saw the stone steps
flowing down
- into the circle where the poets
would stand and sing one day.
- You and Juan saw the poets
showering the air with words
- and the trees drinking words
like water.
- You nailed up the sign and
spread your arms to greet us
- at the ceremony. This could not
be explained
- to the clerk who stamps the
licenses
- for the burial of the dead.
-
- Juan began to cry when he saw
your ashes
- in the wheelbarrow. I shook him
by the shoulder;
- the neighbor who watches the
park from her window
- was eyeing us. I handed him the
shovel.
- We had to clamp our jaws like
mobsters
- stoically soiling their hands
with the grit of a rival thug.
- Your wife poured a bag of plant
food over your ashes
- in case the neighbor peeked too
long through the hedges
- or the cops rolled their cruiser
to a stop, bored
- after years of shoving drunks
into the back seat.
- We stirred the ashes with our
hands till they turned white at the wrist,
- and what I’d heard was true:
there is bone that will not burn,
- bodies that refuse to become
dust, the stubborn shards of a man.
- Ask any criminal who labors to
bury the evidence.
-
- We weren’t criminals. We dug the
hole in the wrong place,
- ripped out the roots, grunted
with every shovel full of rocks.
- We made the little grave too
big, then tossed away the dirt,
- forgetting that we’d need to
fill the hole once we dumped you in it.
- When I tipped the wheelbarrow,
your ashes landed with a puff,
- drifting in the briefest of
clouds over the grass, and Juan
- dropped to his knees, crying
again, giving us away.
- The neighbor poked her head from
the window
- like a chicken suspicious of the
world beyond the coop.
-
- An hour after we began, I wore a
mask of ash and sweat, black shoes white,
- like the last man in the village
to hear the warning of volcano,
- or a miner on the first day back
at work after the strike is lost,
- or a believer smeared with his
ancestors about to wash in the great river.
- A woman who recognized my face
stopped me as I crossed the street.
- Did you just bury something
in the park? she asked.
- Why would I do a thing like
that, I said.
-
- The day we buried you in the
park, I drove home
- with three scoops of your ashes
in a coffee can:
- Chock Full o’Nuts, the
Heavenly Coffee, their
slogan
- emblazoned in a cloud across the
New York skyline.
- At your desk there was bad
coffee and good poetry,
- but no heaven, so I will look
for you under my bootsoles,
- walking through the world,
soaking up the ghosts wherever I may go.
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