Probate Trial

When the trial is done

my father’s ashes will be blown

past memory. The days riding shotgun

under blue then foggy then crystalline skies

done. Finally. And I never

wanted it that way. Always sought

mi Papí allí en la camioneta waiting for me

to get in. And we’d drive.

When I was little, we knitted time

into smiles riding around town

on the tarry seats of a pick-up.

Then I got curious and asked

questions. The most important: whom

had he loved? He didn’t answer

that he loved me.

That would have been out of character.

He was not a liar. Besides he knew

what I really wanted.

I wanted to know about all the women.

My mother who was not his wife;

his wife who was not my mother.

And the others. He answered

that he hadn’t loved any of them.

Without excuses. Without regrets.

I wasn’t part of that story. I was his daughter.

I was pretty. Then I grew up smart.

And sad. And then away. But never

too far. Soon a judge will rule

and my father will simply be

what remains

for one more moment. Then done.

The Boy

I

The sea knocks the boy down. The boy

punches white wave foam, kicks icy water.

When the sea returns, a bigger surging wave.

The boy grips his black boogie board,

heralds the gods with a ninja scream, and floats

over the beckoning curl. The boy rages.

He rages against the sea. This time he wins.

II

The next time. He rages against me.

Bloodshot eyes from too much

of the sea. Boogie boarding all afternoon.

I wasn’t there. He was raging

his own time. Tasting salt. Fettering grains

of sand under a wetsuit. It was

all him. I was doing

other things. The boy rages against

going to sleep. I say, “I’m the adult.

You must do what I say.”

III

Really. I mean. Truly. It is.

This little boy. In a bed. In a

guest room. When I try to explain.

He understands. Too much.

Too much about how the moon pulls

the human heart and when tides rise too high

all is torn asunder. He holds his breath tight

and rages against the moon at midnight,

against a boogie board cracked in two,

against a father who won’t be coming back.

Technological Utopian Splendor

The robots are coming. They will beep into transcendence.

Obliterate death. Eradicate disease. What is left to humbly

abide? In the Book of Job God presents a litany

of unanswerable questions. The idea to be awed by that

which we cannot understand, and so to create

compassion. Sorrow remains, always. The robot makers

have looked through molecules dancing on a shoreline

two steps away from bay windows shining home, and

now can reply to God. No longer is it humbling to fathom

the orbit of planets, the size of the earth, the abyss

in a canyon at the bottom of the ocean. We understand

and create. Time stops still. Our desire remains

to overcome fear. A fear of death. A fear of nothingness.

It could be all over. Zero. Nothing. Just like that. Ashes

to ashes. Dust to dust. Done. Or there could be something

different. Something else. A flow into the universe?

An experience of the godhead? A sparkling light? Uncle Joe

at the end of a tunnel welcoming us home? We just don’t

know. Change is the only constant. Maybe we will

bottle ourselves into machines. Walking talking

bionic beings. Maybe we’ll become brains percolating

in communal jars. Perhaps we’ll learn to set ourselves free

and dance with dolphins under the sea. Maybe we’ll just keep

doing what we’ve always done. Imagine

the edge of the world. When Columbus set sail, his crew

took on the possibility that a cavernous gaping jaw

would swallow them whole. Masts, sails, crew, rope,

even the rum, down the leviathan’s throat.