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Carol Pearce_Worthington

i heard she took his ashes...

on billy bunting’s tour boat out past the breakwater and that she sprinkled half of them just off the beach where we once kicked back and drank beer on his terrace overlooking the great water beyond which lay a horizon that we ignored the line where water ended and sky began and i choose to believe that was the half of him that sang my name when he entered a room the part that brewed beer in the closet who shared my showers who drank too much was scorned by his family and ex-wife who accused him of assault and police raided his apartment to sift their fingers through his flour canister because his brother said he was selling drugs and true he was a bit crazy because he left me for that woman who carried the other half of him to her sister’s house somewhere in the south and planted that part of him in a back yard so i will never know where his other half lies although i carry his younger years inside me the fun the beer the terrace the songs the singing the part i slept beside and woke beside and loved beside that part i believe now lies within the ocean off the beach and from there to the great banks the reefs the trenches the breaks the slopes the edges the canyons the in and out low tides and high the tsunamis the floods the swimmer shrimps the sharks the whales the me the it the vast the short spit island between the ocean and great harbor bay the abyssal plains the deep ocean basins now he is everywhere in the waters that surround my ebbing life part of everything where life appeared and took back that part of him that sang my name when he came inside not the part that left my clothes at the door without a hug or call or cry that part she planted where she liked but the half of him from before her years got freed into salt air salt water running through and all around me and though there is nowhere now for me to place a flag or read a stone i know his voice goes in the waves singing my name as it did when he entered a room ...

autumn rain
on the rose
last gift