"Greece is Wide, Cebes.", Wayne Low
cw: Death, Religion, Allusions to terminal sickness
After Vashti Bunyan and Mount Eerie.
I'd have liked to walk around in your mind
if all the grass didn't make our toes feel so good humming
as if the throat can somehow sorrow
through a crow and a microphone.
I'd have liked to say something just then,
but last week a package arrived with your name
after being lost for ten years while the card
on it took its time to brown. So, like a crunch
of an apple, I thought of your skin, and your
bones out of a jar. The stew you made smelled
ready, so I, with parcel limply in hand, turned
to call no daughter, no sister, no music,
no son. We were busy with other
things in the little time
we spent mostly catching termites.
On the lost mail slip I trembled. It'd been so long
since I'd held a pen and written next to you while
you told me something from that pleather armchair
a room away; the one with grandma's needles and a coin stuck
in the backboard, which was never a problem since I could see
you always. Then you turned away, and I always felt you were burning up
so, I rushed to hug you. Maybe I thought
I'd find you still in the fire, whistling while you
peed, thinking you could cover the sound
with something far less musical. But the way
you'd laugh for what seemed like forever
and then some when I told you that I missed you
and you called me an old person because of how
stupidly emotional I'd get, all while standing in the lawn
grumbling about new cars outside with stereos
that didn't pump with music but gasoline and wax.
Now the music doesn't even sound like the terrible ones did
even out of the better car stereos bought from the big chain
stores further down the street where I sometimes think
everyone sits in the backroom, playing a prank on me
with all these alien sounds like birds, and maybe in that world
I'd still be on the couch out on the lawn that I put to piss
you off, and slept sadly on bad nights and always read old men
talking about the soul without all the anguish
of a man about to die; saying
that we'd live forever just like how my grandpa did. Only when he said that,
he meant the picture above the cabinet that is dusty
since you don't remind me to clean it. The old man
was about to die and all of us sometimes felt that way,
especially when you were right there, with a glass, shaking,
thinking it was grief that later buckled your legs and made us all scream
because we knew the day was coming and the night was
rolling in fast. With one arm hoisting you, and another
with a box of butter and the best mat your sisters
had, we were going to the festival and I didn't think I'd cry,
at least until I was there, but I was so terribly sad
that I shouted at you in the car where you still held
me as if it was religion. The radio broke just then,
which was fine, since ten minutes later we were sitting
in the parking lot, listening to faint whispers of sound
checks, and finally music, but not the bands we wanted.
But it didn't matter since we got the old light sticks
to work and we could pray. And since the world was good,
God could find us in all that racket like we were kids.