Oliver Smith
La poema: Wedding in Ashes
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Oliver Smith
La poema: Wedding in Ashes < Pagina principale < La scrittura < La poesia : La poema |
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Wedding in Ashes
La cima della pagina Roseann pulled up to the side of the road behind a Toyota Avalon, the Lakewood Cemetery Lake just feet away, a crowd of sullen faces drifting in like dark clouds before the sun, but sunshine lit the palace of November, ducks and geese reflective in the still face of water undisturbed by silent wind on Saturday. Michael's memorial lingered in our ears and eyes as internal combustion drew wheels and friends to the soft shore. Cathy Churchill clutched a wooden table she would place before us, her tuxedo draping sorrow beneath such daytime brilliance. Don Portwood, with his black turtle neck, took note of every face, ready to dance improvisation to the penny whistle tune of Michael's plan. "He asked me to hold the bowl and ladle he had made," Don said, the earthly colored clay so warm within his hands, placing it upon the table, with its ladle scooping gold from weeping willows clinging to spring and Michael's last breath. A crow called out through the whispers and glances of chilled anticipation. "The crow is here", said Michael's mother, "It reminds me of Jason". Someone else recalled the friend of Michael, even said his last name. "Jason is here", said Michael's mother, smiling, satisfied, as though Michael had achieved one more detail put in place. "Hi, Jim," Michael said, the day before he died, "I'm praying for a bowel movement...gee...that's a dumb thing to start a conversation with." But that was Michael, details, like the ashes of Michael Prebble and his own, now held in two dark boxes on their way from life, from the church, all of us by the lake wondering where the bearers were, but the loved ones grew in number, pressing in towards Don who asked for room to dance. "Michael", he said, "laid out everything so well for us, but he left the dance to me and the universe, unrehearsed, not steeped in choreography." Two men with boxes in their hands approached the calm shore, Cathy Crooks holding vigil to their side. Hinged lids, plastic bags, gray substance of two men unleashed into the bowl hand crafted from the spinning wheel of fingers flowing through furrows on the side, two men not allowed to join by state, now one in sacred bond by molecule, the ladle turning them inside each other as Don danced, lifting the bowl, carrying our eyes to the boughs of trees asleep and Michael, with his soul beloved now pronounced eternal, "I love you," I said to Michael as he hung up. "I'll listen to your poem on Sunday," he had said just seconds before. We had a date at 1:30, but my words would have to find him out there, where they both can feast on how we all felt when Don released the first ladle full of ashes to the ground, unexpected by all of us, a spirit clutched breath escaping from our lips, together, as silken particles hovered near the bare spot of ground at Don's feet. The ducks and geese responded on their own with a flurry of calls to the clear sky and streams of water white beneath their webbed feet as flight became their message to our ritual, "I think I'm back on track," Michael said to me inside the phone. Paper cups dipped into the wedded pool of Michael Branscom and Michael Prebble, allowed each of us to feel the presence, that physical form of understanding we are all alike once the fires of our existence take us through to the final chord. Couples, hand in hand, man with man, woman with woman, woman with man, Roseann and I watched John and Göran work passed us, Goren's small back pack and his golden hair gently curled on dark skin. They took a cup each, placing the contents on the ground, beneath a tree, into the liquid breath of god. Someone drew a circle around the base of a sapling, I sought out the reclined branches of a willow thirsty for the depths of shadows and stone beneath the lake and let Michael rest there, the powder and dense, small particles of tongue and touch that tasted Kamikaze pancakes from the Egg and I, and his arms that wrapped around me when we met, "don't hug too hard," he would say just weeks before, "there are too many holes in my body". The holes are gone now. The constrictions of reality have been destroyed. The magic of the universe was his now. We all etched our fingerprints into the water placed out for us in a stainless steel bowl, an opportunity to participate in a Maori tradition, another Michael detail. Finally, molded fluid from our hands were poured into the bowl of ash and rinsed together, where we all slid quickly to the mirrored face of god. (c) Oliver Smith |
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( Count from 08/09/2003 ) |
