When I got to his marker, I sat on it, <br />like sitting on the edge of someone's bed <br />and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite. <br />I took some tears from my jaw and neck <br />and started to wash a corner of his stone. <br />Then a black and amber ant <br />ran out onto the granite, and off it, <br />and another ant hauled a dead <br />ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back. <br />Ants ran down into the grooves of his name <br />and dates, down into the oval track of the <br />first name's O, middle name's O, <br />the short O of his last name, <br />and down into the hyphen between <br />his birth and death--little trough of his life. <br />Soft bugs appeared on my shoes, <br />like grains of pollen, I let them move on me, <br />I rinsed a dark fleck of mica, <br />and down inside the engraved letters <br />the first dots of lichen were appearing <br />like stars in early evening. <br />I saw the speedwell on the ground with its horns, <br />the coiled ferns, copper-beech blossoms, each <br />petal like that disc of matter which <br />swayed, on the last day, on his tongue. <br />Tamarack, Western hemlock, <br />manzanita, water birch <br />with its scored bark, <br />I put my arms around a trunk and squeezed it, <br />then I lay down on my father's grave. <br />The sun shone down on me, the powerful <br />ants walked on me. When I woke, <br />my cheek was crumbly, yellowish <br />with a mustard plaster of earth. Only <br />at the last minute did I think of his body <br />actually under me, the can of <br />bone, ash, soft as a goosedown <br />pillow that bursts in bed with the lovers. <br />When I kissed his stone it was not enough, <br />when I licked it my tongue went dry a moment, I <br />ate his dust, I tasted my dirt host. <br />Anonymous submission.<br /><br />Sharon Olds<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/one-year/
