Pale Gray for Guilt


Diaphanous veils,
Sliding drapes of mist,
Screens of drizzle,
Their colorless needles
A reckless tattoo on my face.
Black wrought iron rails
Lined with October's apathetic tears,
Headstones dappling the graveyard beyond.

This day is as it should be
Somehow bleak and neuter,
Blue slate on pewter,
A featureless, low churning sky,
And the trails of tires
Hissing in the darkling afternoon,
Their tail lights a coral snake
On the Clark Avenue bridge.

I take you from my valise,
This symbol I have left to me,
These ashes I have held
For five too many years,
Unable to determine
Just where they should rest.
I still didn't know
So I came here,
At last,
To leave you as you were loved
With your own parents.

But I thought I would know.
I want to fall beneath the weight
Of my tears and my ignorance.
Do I bury this simple styrene urn?
Just spread you to clot and cake in the rain?
In my brain it doesn't matter,
In my heart I am in chaos.
There is but one time to do this.
One time to say this good-bye.

I take the trowel from my coat
Guessing where his elbow might have lain.
Best in the arms of your father I think,
The one least resolved
In the lives of you three.
The one that loved you the most silently,
The least conditionally.
I smile wryly, softly - he was... a father.

As my blade first parts the grass,
And I hear its raspy grit in the soil
Somehow it fills me.
I know this is right.
I will not be leaving as I came,
A burdened man pale gray for guilt.
Only my tears sliding away,
Held in her arms and shroud of the night.