This morning I saw my father driving a red
Toyota wagon with Quebec plates,
, turning the corner at Grand, heading
west. He didn’t see me, and I was surprised
to see him in the city without calling on me
even though, for the last three years, he has been
dead. It certainly looked like him, the chiselled
jaw, the Grecian formula hair, yes, my father
maybe twenty years ago, still in his prime, still
himself, or looking like himself. All
the immortality the Earth can offer
may be the kind we had before
we were even born, the living we did then,
we will continue to do through genes
we also share with Neanderthals.
My father drives on not knowing me.
The dead are not dead, perhaps
the dead are not even transformed. They are
everywhere, just not talking to us.
Don’t try listening for them in family photos,
if they are forever, they are forever
dumb with forgotten conversations when
every day is that August day in 1992. My father
in his white-striped polo shirt,
high in the boughs of a fig tree, gathering fruit
for my greed. I still see him in many places,
and in my hands, my Roman nose, and chiselled jaw.

Our dead
have retired and moved off island.
They are not gone, they have not passed on,
they are incommunicado.

¹ Lines from Jane Hirschfield’s poem "Great Powers Once Raged Through Your Body”