(day of the dead)
cemeteries
Yorick in Moscow
(Artwork by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)
The cemetery is full of trees. How do they dig the graves? You couldn’t get a backhoe between the trunks. Are there still gravediggers here, men with shovels making dark jokes about the things they unearth in the course of their work? I think about dying here and what it would be like to lie with my head against one set of roots and my feet against another. With a rock over my chest that told everyone my foreign name. People would walk back and forth over me, murmuring, in a tongue not my own, the first and last years I was alive. For decades I would dream my life, until the gravediggers retrieved me, held me up to the light, let the sun shine through my skull.
last frost
my footprint melted
into the soil
Memorial Day
May 23: 1-30: My father
1.
freeze after thaw
cell phone ring
makes me slip on the ice
2.
colder than yesterday
my sister’s voice
on the phone
3.
on my back on the ice
clouds torn open
reveal more clouds
4.
cell phone ring
the airport
vanishes
5.
a stranger’s car
roads darker than I’m used to
curve toward home
6.
snow on dark steps
inside
the family waits
7.
pancakes heavy
in my stomach
throwing out his painkillers
8.
the day after his death
the death of the neighbor’s dog
we sympathize
9.
cold draft in his room
the cards
we used to play with
10.
knocking with cold hands
at the wrong door
of the funeral home
11.
list of funeral expenses
scratches on
the polished table
12.
early dark
white sheet pulled away
from his surprised face
13.
snow on a low wall
choosing between
two burial places
14.
PowerPoint slides
of gravestones
chairs with hard seats
15.
stack of Sunday papers
can’t stop reading
the obituary
16.
morning fog
running up the hills
I left behind
17.
trying on dresses
my sister’s
opinion
18.
Olympic snowboarding
I blow my nose
on his handkerchiefs
19.
thin pajamas
Googling the words of
his favorite hymn
20.
steam from my mother’s tea
showing her
Facebook condolences
21.
day of the funeral
rust from the leaky
faucet
22.
unheated waiting room
one by one
we put coats back on
23.
my father’s funeral
truth
and lies
24.
standing for a hymn
memory of my head
reaching his elbow
25.
minister’s hug
his sympathy card
will regret my unbelief
26.
frost on the windowpane
unfamiliar
relatives
27.
their sympathy
taste of
sweet red punch
28.
snow in the cemetery
wrong kind
of shoes
29.
fresh snow on his car
another
dead battery
30.
my inheritance
a car to drive
a thousand miles home
*
My father died in February. I’d made no effort whatsoever to write about his death before. Or speak about it, really. Or think about it, come to think about it.
Something about haiku makes it easier, by forcing you to remember and concentrate on the tiny physical details of the experience. Writing these has been like compiling a mental photo album of the week of his death. It’s allowed both distance and immediacy. I approach the experience, come close enough to touch it, then draw back quickly, as soon as I start to feel it burn.
May 19: 4 (Spring in the Cemetery)
spring in the cemetery
mourners in heavy clothes
sweat mixed with tears
May 8: 3 (Running Through the Cemetery)
running through the cemetery
pollen drifting
over gravestones
Red Dragonfly 
