Elegy

I know you longed to be anywhere else
that afternoon in the Buick's front seat

saying my mother had gone to her rest,
then something about dreams, something

about sleep, a necklace of sunlight bright
on the dash, the upholstery smelling of must.

Now you are gone too, suddenly taken
in a morning nap following a two-day bender,

the veined leaves of trillium and belladonna
ganged in close to the porch where you lay.

Today I put on a new shirt for the funeral,
long pants with creases sharp as a knife.

I put on the shoes with midnight blue laces,
a black hat that tilts toward the ground.

Father, we step together now, over dew
that made the old weaver weep

in the Irish ballad you sang,
captured among the branches today

in the glittering webs of autumn.
My friend says when someone we love

passes on, we trail after them in a daze,
emptied, blind as a husk. And the dark waves

breaking over the rocks make it easy to fall
asleep here, rhythmic, shorebound, common as sand.