The Last Voyage

Your last voyage

a tumultuous tsunami

of bureaucratic entanglements.

Navigating the uncharted map of grief

Forty eight hours

to box sixty eight years of life.

Scavenging every bit of paper

Troving for some relic of relation

But blood is the bounty of burial rights.

Pictures of mundane magic

and treasured trinkets

crammed into my suitcase

leaving behind the only thing I came for--

You.

A California state employee--

a pirate of parentage--

rested your remains

on the white caps of waves

an entire ocean away.

But, you weathered the waters

of time and place

and arrived for our last sail.

Drifting in the darkness of dreams

we traveled through memory

Weightless and silent.

Snapshots of our history

Bouncing like bouies

In the rough sea

Guiding our final fare together.

In a moment,

You disappeared into the obsidian abyss

Anchored forever

in the sea of slumber.

Read at Improbable Poetry Tour, 2017