Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
Light like an angel
shines from inside your bones —
ground to imitate ash,
something delicate,
ephemeral. Some thing that
turns to paste without adding
water - appreciated between finger
and thumb, is drawn into a sudden
beige brush stroke.
Shall we believe that some urn
on some mantle on some
mountain can hold you down?
The true ash is refractory
and is blown out the smokestack early.
It doesn't linger.
It shrugs from its back the soot
that falls from other chimneys,
and rushes to ascend the starry sky
like comet dust compelled by the beck of siren pulsars
and the winking jewels of meta-wisdom studding
the spheres.
What's left from flame is frame,
a skull with a misquoted look upon her face.
Alas, poor Yorick! I feel like hell!
This calcareous fruit of the crematorium,
like Coyote's smoking, skeletal umbrella,
cannot be presented to the bereaved.
So they pulverize it first.
This hilarious fraud —
bone for flesh,
trinkets for the hand that warmed them,
lenses for the soul that beheld you through them.
These shiny beads are not what we want.
We want justice.
Not just to be burnt-out
and ground-down.
Returned to our
familiar in-intimacies,
our mineral form, our acrid beauty.
Our wrong turn at Albuquerque.
