What Remains

Since I'm late in posting, I thought I'd honor Mother's Day and some of our late mothers . . .

What Remains

by Marge Piercy

These ashes are not the fine dust I imagined. 
The undertaker brings them out from the back
in a plastic baggie, like supermarket produce.
I try not to grab, but my need shocks me,
how I hunger to seize this officially
labeled garbage and carry you off.


All the water was vaporized,
the tears, the blood, the sweat,
fluids of a juicy, steamy woman
burnt offering into the humid Florida
air among cement palm trees with brown
fronds stuck up top like feather dusters.


In the wind the palmettoes clatter.
The air is yellowed with dust.
I carry you back North where you belong
through the bumpy black December night
on the almost empty plane stopping
at every airport like a dog at posts.


Now I hold what is left in my hands
bone bits, segments of the arched skull
varicolored stones of the body,
green, copper, beige, black, purple
fragments of shells eroded by storm
that slowly color the beach.


Archeology in a plastic baggie.
Grit spills into my palms:
reconstruct your days, your odyssey.
These are fragments of a smashed mosaic
that formed the face of a dancer
with bound feet, cursing in dreams.


At the marriage of the cat and dog
I howl under the floor.
You will chew on each other's bones
for years. You cannot read
the other's body language.
On the same diet you starve.


My longest, oldest love, I have brought
you home to the land I am dug into
I promise a path laid right to you,
roses to spring from you, herbs nearby,
the company of my dead cats
whose language you already know.


We'll make your grave by piney woods,
a fine place to sit and sip wine,
to take the sun and watch the beans
grow, the tomatoes swell an redden.
You will smell rosemary, thyme,
and the small birds will come.

I promise to hold you in the mind

as a cupped hand protects a flame.
That is nothing to you. You cannot

hear. Yet just as I knew when you
really died, you know I have brought
you home. Now you want to be roses.