Elegy for Ava

Remember when you were young.

You shone like the sun.

Shine on, you crazy diamond. 

~David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright

A gently curled smile upon her face,

lids parted in soft, spacious gaze, rose petals

strewn across her tiny form and way,

Ava—drifting like fog along the lowest horizon,

skirted by love, the sturdy hands of six sisters—

passed us on the stone lined path. We followed,

encircled her, held onto each other in October

chill, beheld her wrapped in purple on the pyre.

Four friends stepped out from our circle,

lowered four torches to windows, lit her final bed

from four directions, my brother in the east.

In wait, split logs lay beneath the grate. Others

were leaned like gates against her body,

a modesty, a drape for eventual bones.

In adolescence, the voice of wood cracked,

stood up tall, orange, ravaged her edge, crawled

and licked and spit black coals around a swirling

grey green spiral of smoke lifting languorously

from the center of the pyre. Subterranean viscera,

slowly igniting, finally caught up to rhyme

with the metaphor of her life. Smoke dancing now,

child spinning for joy of dizziness, whirling dervish,

palm up, turning, turning to find the still point

of a god inside, still point of a wolf woman’s eye,

wildness vaporized, rising up from the muddy earth

of her, now a roaring chorus of sunny tongues

reaching, singing the huge bonfire she always was,

released to bend cold air. Her final watery mirage

smoothed to clear space, blue sky, invisible stars.

Our black coats begged the sun.

Feet ice blocks, arms around my lover,

my dearest love, whose quaking stilled

in our embrace, his heart a drum

against my ear, I prayed for more life, more heat,

longed to stand closer to Ava, dreamed

of lounging by her: shoes off, feet naked,

as close to the flame as I could bear,

wondering if my animal prayer was sacrilege

or reverence. But then, the invitation came.

“Come,” the woman said, “Come closer. Enjoy

Ava’s warmth.” Our circle tightened inward,

innocent as moths. Her generous heat glowed

across sighing faces, chests and limbs,

surpassed the weak sun behind us, just above

the eastern peaks, foil to the full moon

in the west. I offered Ava my back,

and to the sun, my squinting eyes. Ava won.

Stories went round. Pagans howled. Buddhists

bowed. Mostly, for hours, all stood silent, humbled,

proud of our friend. It’s all love, she had said.

Oh! to witness this wondrous woman burn!

One day would come our turn to watch

the other become light. Soon, a small white dome

appeared near the end of the pyre: her skull,

I presumed, crown too perfect in circumference

to be wood. I thought of all the hands of family—

born, chosen, beloved Scot—who stroked

that lovely head in life, in vigil, offered comfort

as she died. A fire keeper finally laid more logs

to fill that glowing door, a wooden veil,

one of a hundred falling veils. I believe Ava

would not have minded being that naked before us,

as naked as her stories, the one a self-professed

best friend of countless best friends told

in which she walked in childlike innocence

the last months of her life, bare breasted

in her diaper at a campground when a family

pulled up in the next lot, shy and shocked.

“Honey, maybe you should cover up.”

“Huh?” Ava responded, bent over, tidying

the table, uncomprehending. “You know,” the friend

reminded her, tenderly, “others are not as open

as we are.” “Oh, ok,” Ava said, nonchalantly slipping

the fabric over her thin arms, her shining head.

In commemoration of the open air cremation of Grace Ava Swordy, 21 Oct. 2021