Higdon Ferry Road

.

On Higdon Ferry Road, I float beyond

the red warning lights of a dark country,

their beacons blinking on and off,

and then vanishing.
I hover above the hospital where my father died.
Here my body has become obsolete,
vaporized and dispersed like a distant echo.
Below this blurred world my father’s body
rests in a silver urn,
his limbs no longer hanging feebly from his torso,
his skin, blood and bones, the hinges

of his shoulders,

knees and elbows burned to powder and ash,

clavicle to breast, a box to clouds.

Will flowers bloom in this fog or will they wilt?
When I was a boy, between talk of sex and baseball,
I heard rumors of a coming air invasion
from Russia. I was afraid.
I watched the sky. Lightning flashed.

Thunder rumbled. I saw airplanes
coming out of the clouds. I hid in a garage.
During the Korean War, my dad
was a radar operator in Alaska; he too
looked for air invaders from Russia.

Often, he worked the night shift
and slept when he could.

My mother often dreams my father
is in the room with us.
She says his presence has begun to fade,
not like a ghost but more like a blip on a radar screen,

an echo, blinking on and off,

and then vanishing.

She hands me a box of his clothes.
I put them on and so he moves (and so he grows
and so I wake
and so I see and so he walks and so he breathes).