Saturday, November 1, 2014

Sharon Dolin




Midnight in Paris


Talcum powder
ground finer than ash
day of my father’s
funeral: proffered
     to me

by his traitorous girl
friend: what he had kept
on his bathroom shelf
for twenty years
   after

my mother’s death
and I — why — did I turn it
down? As though to own
it were to own her
      calcified

remains? And with his—
now newly in the ground
now, not to own it
is to own regret—

the ghost body — its
cobalt blue the color 
of grief that I said no
and when I called to say
    yes

she had already thrown it away.
A relief to her, release to her.
Here in lines, let me preserve
what I had meant to 
                                    take.



© Sharon Dolin


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