My mother moves his resting place each day from room
to room. The ashes shift inside the wooden dove-tailed box,
mute as sleeping birds. I want to lift the silence up
and hold him, put him to my ear like that rare and
convoluted shell he found near Cape Perpetua.
(You will always find the ocean there.)
They say the waves we hear inside a shell are just the wash
and flow within the ear, our own unfathomed ocean. I keep
breaking
on my father’s shore, wishing I could hear him drift past me
in a shift of sleep, could learn the language made of sift and
dissolution.
I watch my mother with his ossuary, watch her carry him
(You will always find the ocean there.)
to where she’s going: kitchen table, hall, the Steinway in the living
room.
Her fingers flotsam him to notes. I wonder if she hopes his motes
will
stir, dreaming chords inside the bones of trees. If I could only hear
the part of him that lost his shell, I would tell the hours, the weight
of watching as she walks, each day waking one more time, alone.
(Always, you will find the ocean there.)
