Understanding the Dead
You can comb their hair and they don’t care
if you miss a strand or thwap their watch band
Tease them with sassafras fruit, smile and be cute
when you walk through them when you bamboozle them
when you sing beastly long songs about the wrongs
they did as kids. They lied, they hid
from you, tricked you, cheated you—all true
not really all true. It’s just you
walking through the dead, disturbing their beds,
no curtsy or bow, but finding a tone of mercy thinking berries:
choke berry, blueberry, snow berry, evergreen berry.
When you die may you grow into a strawberry
or luscious lingonberry, be plucked by a grizzly bear
who tears up a mountain, growls, grunts and hunts
for sleep among the night clouds where only thoughts
trespass to disturb the dead whose memories live.
Author: John Davis
Photo: Mark Eder on Unsplash
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