Sand Burial

Before tractors buried my father

who would have loved to watch the work

of those machines, earthmovers, like himself—

the way good men pulled levers to lift his vault lid,

suspended like a Frank Lloyd Wright cantilever

hovering over the eternal balcony of death,

that bardo where inside marries outside,

and lowered one end perfectly above him

until one lip slipped into the vault’s rim

and made the opposite end quaver

(That’s how you know male meets female,

the undertaker said with pride in his men,

artists, he called them, for knowing

the subtle arts of the trade: See, that’s when

they know the concrete seam will seal, their signal

to lower the lid the rest of the way)—

I stood with Sam in his grandpa’s Quicksilver cap,

grey hairs and spiced sweat still in the band,

threw fistfuls of Utah sand into the hole

then shovelfuls, to finally let his chronic absence go,

resurrecting now the memory of that day my father

fished small grains of Illinois sand from my red eyes

with tissue he had wadded to a point,

that tenderness, the lingering sting.