Poems
The hard-won privileges of the deadAwakened to the seashore, stock-still as pillars of a pier, the living townspeople. The dead wash ashore. “Three fisher-boats overturned in the storm,” Oscar whispers, but the sea is steady as glass. And the fishermen were no ordinary men— they were the Lord’s apostles. Andrew washes to my feet. (I recognize the octopus tattoo on his sternum.) He is heavier filled with water. “Where should I put him?” “Over here.” “What? Where did you get these caskets so fast?” “We made them out of driftwood and the smashed up rowboats. There’s enough to make two more.” “Shouldn’t we wait to see if something happens?” I say. “Maybe God will breathe new life into them.” “It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to bury them. We’re shipping them back out to sea. Then God can do what he wants with them.” “But the ocean coughed them up once already. Do you think we should put them back in harm’s way?” Still, I place him in a casket— Oscar carrying the feet—across the sand, to the makeshift boxes guarded by sea lions. I sit down on one. It feels good to straighten out my back. Oscar doesn’t need to rest. Then, when I am alone with the dead, Andrew’s eyes open—or maybe the water bubbles up. “Sh,” he says. “Listen. Let them do what he said. It is the quickest way to put ourselves in the hands of God.” “Really?” “Yes. He has prepared a whale to swallow us.” “Where was the whale when you needed him earlier? It could have saved us a lot of heartache.” “I apologize. It was examining the Great Barrier Reef. Have you seen it? It is so beautiful, like verdigris—the green molting over bronze or copper. Will you do me a favor?” he asks shyly. “Sure, anything.” “Make a statue of me out of bronze?” “Okay.” “And throw it in the ocean.” “Okay.” But I’m afraid the whale will eat it also, after all the hard work I put into it. Home | Email |