his
cardboard coffin's white walls
or
split plastic seams and spill
his
gray ashes and bleached grains
into
a man's living shape,
then
let words brighten the black,
fill
the mouth, and stir his tongue.
If
I listen to him speak
and
again hear his timber
like
a new buzzsaw purring
or
drill bits sinking in wood,
its
sound will drown out echoes
from
the absence of his face.
He
will answer for his death
and
give a complete account
of
heavens and hellfires
his
spirit cannot enter
because
if I keep talking
he
will never be silent.
My
father's running blindly
across
black peony fields,
his
hair blowing off his skull
like
the thinning, tangled wake
from
a tailspinning rocket.
He
wants me to let him die,
but
if he cannot return
and
my words can never join
ashes
like jigsaw pieces
and
solve this puzzling grief,
I
will keep talking and run
where
the dead voices gather.
