Here: an Elegy

It’s already been eleven months and we’re still finding you amid the living. 
First it was a condom slipped in a side compartment of the suitcase
we carried onto the flight home with your ashes;
then it was the fifty-dollar bill found folded in an old shirt pocket
moments before tying off the Good Will bag. 

One morning we woke to Patrick—the nephew you never met—
bashing the living room floor with your drumsticks,
one of your ubiquitous ball caps low over his tiny eyebrows as you used to wear it. 
Last month we got a message from one of your former students
asking to resume his lessons, and argued an hour
about how we should respond, as you or as the truth.

You might be pleased to know we found your i-Pod in a dresser drawer. 
Those tracks you laid down with the band included with The Beatles and Miles Davis
will never be deleted.  I play them while walking my usual route by the river
and imagine I’m in your living room in Albuquerque listening
to you recount recording sessions like an old weathered rocker,

bemoaning your mortgage and the night shifts that kept you from gigs. 
I don’t open your mail but feel guilty throwing it away,
half expecting you to call again Thanksgiving  or Christmas day,
explaining it was all some cosmic misunderstanding,
thanks for taking care of things, but you’ll take it from here,
as you disappear another half a year. 

You’re here, and here. 
You’re the dawn birds’ aubade outside my window
and the church bells hanging in the valley. 
You’re the fog girding the mountain in an existential alphabet. 
You’re the bark from the golden retriever down the road,

and maybe even that sun pulsing eons above me I didn’t notice until your first night gone. 
Maybe you’re all these things, maybe none, just a name
generated from synaptic processes responsible for our hubris. 
More likely, you’re staying as far away as possible, knowing how disingenuous
your time was here. I don’t blame you. I would like to request, however,
that when it’s my turn to transition, it’s you who comes to ferry me across the river.

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