To the sea we bear our fathers in state –
or what they’ve done to them: the square conversions.
Surf mild as receding tides,
we slump in dunes with our burdens,
our careful, ignored speeches.
No one notices what’s borne in a casket,
old sumpture furnaced in the drabbest stove,
death a utilitarian blast.
But surprisingly heavy, refractory,
so that we have to retrace our footsteps
and find something (a knife even)
to hack it open with –
so violent we almost attract
attention in those dunes. Almost.
No one heeds the deepening night
or what’s being plundered.
You swim among them with those ashes,
unknown, isolate, unforgiven.
Not even our fathers listen to those last
hoarse gasps of regret and acknowledgment:
whether poem or lied or code or rant.
Like becalmed fishermen
or last tentative swimmers
or octogenarians tugging rinsed Pomeranians,
our fathers are preoccupied,
turn their heads west – even in death.