Cremation July 20, 2020

 

My cool body lies

waiting for the fire.

They will not ask,

How were her poems?

What was she like as a young girl?

Someone dredged up my best skirt

a second-hand affair that whirled

around my calves

on solitary strolls under these Hungarian skies.

The heart is calm now.

It is no more mine, now,

than the tree that shaded me

as I wrote my words.

No more mine

than the dreams that marshalled me

across the dry plains of my despair,

up the mountains of hopes,

to cross rivers

       muddied from the elk waste (of my humour)

       clear to the pebbles and sand (of my inspirations)

       rough with the white water and boulders (of my challenges)

       stormy with the logs and limbs (of my lost loves)

       forbidding with the ice and undercurrents (of my fears)

Dreams opaque as a teary eye,

they dissipate like warm breath on a window

and perhaps leap onto the next

unsuspecting victim - my dream is your dream.

A box in the upper corner of the closet.

The closet in a house from long ago.

A dried rose, preserved. From whose coffin?

Whose wedding? Whose hopes?

This body is no longer mine.

The blood has stilled.

The breath has paused and holds.

Will one last thwack push out the final pocket of life?

Or leave it to expel

when the nerves jump, muscles contract

and the flesh fries in fat.

That breath will soar.

That breath was me.