For
Dave who Died at 46
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(January 1984)
Death makes us thieves
trying to steal
what we could not have
while the flesh held life.
His life works fly among us
as we barter the magic of his dead fingertips.
His hands adept at fashioning things
now make a post-mortem tug-of-war:
Of worn boots and coonskin hat,
of handmade knives rusted dull,
of teepee, disemboweled, boneless
(poles cut and burnt)
of lanterns and leather leggings
(worn soft as the skin of women.)
Pulling, his widow (legitimate at last) --
pulling, his girlfriends, brothers, children, father
friends, family all,
and marauders, all.
Jealous of finite time
and stealing bereft his corpse
now attired in brand new suit and
antiseptic shirt, buttoned
to choke all laughter in his throat;
wild curls purloined, hair shellacked straight.
And someone even stole from his still hands,
the dirt beneath his fingernails.
Death makes us fools
lying to keep what’s already lost.
His life history’s now rewritten
a hundred times at least
(But Dave says nothing,
just like he always did.)
Embellished to legend --
black powder gunman,
cannon-maker, Rabbit-King --
skinny and sweating in the sweet
strawberry Sooke air, living in a canvas
castle on the hill:
His family bewildered in town,
one girlfriend trustee to his last hours,
but not absent years;
all trying to outguess his thoughts and desires,
nights and days
with no faults and no failings,
preserving stories
while more lives fly regretfully by.
Women weep and try to will his eyes open
but death lids that lascivious gleam
and in his pants a bulge dies
behind the coffin lid
no longer waiting to spring.
Death makes us children
wishing the story would not end.
His life in the hills
he sang by the campfire
his own strange words to
our familiar tunes.
His life in the hills
he built with alder poles
skinned painstakingly bare
(to build not to burn)
arranged cleverly on the rocks,
and always higher to the sky.
His life in the hills
he embalmed and we buried
with the shards of broken glass
last summer – his smashed rum bottles
filled the entire garbage pit.
He looked down from the hill and
toasted our work, filling his grave.
We light bonfires now
each one bigger, hotter, higher
as alder burns
and we sit in our survivors’ circle
where tepee poles once raised
strong arms to the sun and stars.
He had a light always
at the hill’s crest:
Campfires gathered our faces, and
lamps or candles reflected
sweet light from flesh,
white and round and hot.
Sunlight, his, at the top of the hill,
first in the morning,
last at night.
Death makes all lamps,
candles, fires, and lanterns
death makes our lives
now
our own to light.