Lane Line

Others, I handle the loss with
what might be called dignity.
Or detachment.

When Jeremy died, fallen
from a cliff, literally the
metaphor for suddenness,
I’m not sure I ever cried.

The cliché of a cliff, for
fuck’s sake.

On the way to Johnson City
for the funeral, passing through
the Smokies, living up
to their name, green-gray
in the mist, layered construction
paper, the sun where it should be,
properly yellow in the corner
of the page, I felt something then.

Not tears, but
their possibility?

On my commute this morning,
a new lane line awry. The
straight yellow ending
in a flourish.

Make things more confusing
to slow traffic.

Leaving Tennessee, I drove
to Atlanta, where I made
out with a woman I’d met
at my other friend,
Kirk’s, funeral.

(Brain cancer.)

2009 was a shit year.

I’ll assert that neckin’ is
a valid response to grief.

Some moments feel
more like love than
others.

Let’s bring back the term
“neckin’.”

Let’s all
“go steady.”

I can’t remember past lives,
but I remember my most
primitive, prelinguistic
ancestors pausing to watch
water, leaves in a breeze, fire.

Fire defies even the
scientist’s understanding
of fire.

If I can remember 300,000
years ago, maybe, too,
I can foresee 300,000 years
ahead.

In movement lies
our immortality.

This is my last will and
testament:

Cremate my body
(I don’t say me because
me will be missing)
and toss it in the dumpster
in the lane behind Pinkie’s.

If you’re so moved,
raise me a toast.

If I’m still anywhere,
it will be in the light
refracted through the facets
of the bottom of a glass.

Light trapped like fire.
Not me, no, but alive.