She Who Wanted

She Who Wanted

By Lynn Tudor Deming

And so my mother

slid on a trestle into the flame,

she who wanted

afterwards to be poured out

among the fish and algae,

her last dust adrift

in the reedy foam.

But my father persuaded her

to go into earth,

her ashes sealed in a box

below a stone,

so we could visit her,

he said, so he would not

lie alone in his last bed.

She lies now on a hill

where no fish swim

and no gulls caw,

in a town she never really loved;

and I visit them, sunk

in their damp hulls,

moored side by side

under stones and the nebulaes'

wild drifting blooms.

© Copyright 2004, Lynn Tudor Deming, All Rights Reserved

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Document last modified on: 03/06/2005

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