In Preparation For Releasing My Father's Ashes

Early summer and the front yard’s overgrown.
The light falls spotted through the black walnut leaves.
“We are all like the grass,”
the scriptures sing again and again,
“Here today and tomorrow thrown into the oven.”
Green grass, shot through
with mysterious,
unending,
green.
The passage,
like your absence,
is familiar and dreamlike;
hard to follow while lying on my back
smoking this cigar,
blowing circles
to the June sky.
Grass or sun,
cigars or human beings,
all memory is made from burning.

Five summers AWOL.
I still see your mischievous smile,
your helpless tears.
Your life now a story,
a picture book,
a fable,
an inspiration--
dependent on the teller.
“All stories are untrue,” you once told an audience,
knowing full well that stories are all we have of the truth.
This is my story:
We loved each other as best we could.

With your hands
I gather the cut blades,
pour the grey diesel,
drop the wet stained tobacco,
then stand
vigil
while the red rolling waves spray
foxtails like fireworks.
I stir
and rake
and stir.
Still I see
green never burns.