On this All Souls Day, I offer a poem about one kind of a...
On this All Souls Day, I offer a poem about one kind of afterlife (there are many) from Gods of Water and Air:
Smiling Back from the Afterlife
I meet my father for breakfastin some life after Alzheimer’s. He smiles: Are you still my daughter? The first sick joke from the afterlife begins on the phone. I say, I regret that I am. His skull knobbed yellow and blue, bruisedfrom an unremembered mishap, I imagine his facethe color of a car’s undercarriage, the sunfrom his ocean view windowcatching the green mica flecks in his eyes. His thoughts float on the surface, torn out of context. He’s dying, he says:ninety-two and a ragpile wreck.
He throws down the paper. Still all assholes! he proclaims and asks the word for forgetfulness. I remind him it’s CRS syndrome: Can’t Remember Shit. His favorite joke lives on in my memory. Everything between us lives in me, so when I leave him in his black leather chair, I feel his confusion pelting my back. Do I know you? Your name is Rachel, right?The phone catches his frown, then smilein its black brick, photo grim as a toe tag.Still your daughter, I say from the airport.
Now I’m on a plane and as far as he’s concerned, I might as well bein the afterlife. I’m mulching himover, planting him in memory, watering him with thin answers,sure that he’ll spring up in life after this, my old deep-rooted weed.
Smiling Back from the Afterlife
I meet my father for breakfastin some life after Alzheimer’s. He smiles: Are you still my daughter? The first sick joke from the afterlife begins on the phone. I say, I regret that I am. His skull knobbed yellow and blue, bruisedfrom an unremembered mishap, I imagine his facethe color of a car’s undercarriage, the sunfrom his ocean view windowcatching the green mica flecks in his eyes. His thoughts float on the surface, torn out of context. He’s dying, he says:ninety-two and a ragpile wreck.
He throws down the paper. Still all assholes! he proclaims and asks the word for forgetfulness. I remind him it’s CRS syndrome: Can’t Remember Shit. His favorite joke lives on in my memory. Everything between us lives in me, so when I leave him in his black leather chair, I feel his confusion pelting my back. Do I know you? Your name is Rachel, right?The phone catches his frown, then smilein its black brick, photo grim as a toe tag.Still your daughter, I say from the airport.
Now I’m on a plane and as far as he’s concerned, I might as well bein the afterlife. I’m mulching himover, planting him in memory, watering him with thin answers,sure that he’ll spring up in life after this, my old deep-rooted weed.
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