My youngest son gave me a poem about the day we spread Dad's ashes in San Francisco Bay and I thought that I would honor him today with his grandson's poem.
THE SPREADING
As we wait on a wall of sea breeze,
pelicans fly in formation above the water,
and mother remembers that, when in Aptos,
they called these pelicans The Mafia.
All the while, families wait with guarded cargo,
wait, squinting through the blanched acrylic windows.
at the bridge that paints a ruddy-orange matrix,
stroked against the grey morning sky, and
carnations in hand to shed as stirring crops,
we shore up our own exact, tender words
-flowers with which the barren is faced-
as we wait on a wall of sea breeze,
to release his "request" into the water;
a fixture of colors in the many-eyed sea,
like trillions of glimmering peacock feathers.
A bodily belonging on the slopes of the bay.
