Reliquaries
The black one contains the incense of his cremation:
the fragrance of hair become ash,
shreds of flesh lost among the sorting of the parts,
grindings of those that didn’t burn.
A bowl of gold nuggets reshaped in fire;
jewelry for the bereaved.
Another, fashioned from prayer and smoke,
holds a rosary and a cross.
(Was he a believer?).
In the plain envelope, the one with the string tie,
are photographs and small paintings of his women;
some he didn’t know.
That one is made of ice. Windings, stained cotton sheets,
imprints of last bodies can be found there.
The silvered one, the hemisphere, hides a woman’s breasts;
the oval box the curve of her body from breast to knee;
the one of marble holds knees to ankles.
Her feet and head? He sold them to a collector.
Take care with that one. It holds his souls, one for each face.
(Do souls have weight?)
Arrange the boxes for me, will you? Put them in a life’s order.
Will you begin with the one,
and then the other,
and the third becomes the ghost?
I come back to the resolved:
his is the humility of the commonplace,
refuge of the soon forgotten,
a natural process.
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