Presence

In response to T. Paul Hernandez's
"In the Mist of Ireland and Lousiana"
Krost Symposium, 1998

It's true:
The dead have grown weary
                                           of the future,
An equation
                    for which they
Have invented the formula,
A landscape
                   already painted.

The dead:
                they have grown tired
Of answers.

And so has she.

In the next life, though,
He will give her questions.
He will give her
Clouds
            the earth
Surrenders to,
Rain
          the sky cannot release,

Perhaps even
The tendon of light
                              that holds their gaze.

And she:

She will give him
the memory of absence,
The place
               where the wind stops,

Waves forgetting their shapes,
Perhaps even
The half of his body
                               he had forgotten.
But the dead are tired
of lip service and empty promises:
Weary of the stories
                               they spend eternity unwriting:

And so they gift themselves his arms,
And strap on
                     to their dogged torsos
His limbs' bad ghosts,
                                  that finally,

He might offer her
The only thing
                      she's ever truly wanted.

poem notes