The Infirmary

Scatter His Ash

59 s c a t t e r h i s a s h Where the minnesota runs boy-hard and driven, muscles north against sea and map, where elms huddle derelict along the banks and wind tears the sky into pieces, on the breath of a boy, along the arc a hawk makes rising, through the downglide, groomed by wind and memory, in the tomb of the bulb, crocus, or iris, in those long corridors of dark, on the pulse of evening tide that marks a life in one-quarter time, on the bones of the brothers, that bridge he has too soon crossed over, on the bones of the father, shabby altar, on the bones of the father. ...