He kept you in a box and forgot to tell us
you came back alive when he dreamed
you kissed him, you in death, he just before
he died, not seeing his own death on your lips,
parting. And then we buried you—four years
too late—in a coincidence of beachfront, garrison
and sea. It seems odd now we would choose
that piece of land jutting into the Atlantic across
from Coney Island, where you rode the roller
coaster in forty-five—the last time, you said,
‘cause you couldn’t take the heights. Strange,
don’t you think, we buried Dad before you,
on the farm he left for good at twenty-two,
and then he chose it in the end. And you—
a child abandoned to walk the beach at night
with brothers as your sometimes guards, you
wanting above all else to be dusted into sea.
One wonders where roots and extinction begin.
No matter, now, how much I would undo it all,
acceptance finds its own way home, as ashes
on foam, memorial in field and sky.
