Several months ago, a 22-year-old woman died while driving drunk near our house, on a busy street that snakes through a patch of woods. I drive that road to work every day, so I see the makeshift memorial her family put together.
I.
you are remarkably sober
as you assemble what you need,
a strange array of supplies:
glue, feathers, cardboard, flowers, wire;
and you fashion a set of wings
(yes wings),
and a funeral bouquet,
and a sign that says Rest in Peace
in black marker
in your best script,
and you take it to the tree
with the bark ripped off,
right there,
at the ruthless bend in the road.
you hang the wings
well above the tree’s white wound,
and nestle the bouquet
between two roots,
and as you affix the sign
a car speeds by,
slicing the air as it goes.
another car passes, and another,
and at first
the gusts knock you off balance,
but you learn to adjust,
to brace yourself,
to stand firm and lean in.
but still,
how dare these people
glide past,
floating on the waves of radio songs,
laughing into their phones?
II.
you think about the place often,
but you don’t return for some time.
you can’t, because
the busyness of your mourning has tipped over
into the business of your
getting back to
getting on with
moving forward with
living
life.
plus, well,
it’s embarrassing, all your grief on
crude display.
so you leave the site untended;
it’s just easier.
but
sooner or later you must return,
straighten the feathered wings,
remove the sign that bled black letters,
and clear out the wilted blooms,
or maybe just crush them into brown confetti
that trembles into the road.
fresh flowers were the right decision at first
(vibrant, real, momentary, like she was)
but now it’s time for practical silk, and you cry,
not because she deserves better than fakes, though she does,
but because silk lasts awhile, and you know now,
this is going to take much longer than you thought.
so you secure those wings even tighter,
and you plant those silk flowers
secure, for the long unchanging time.
III.
now’s the season
when nothing much happens.
you glide by the place, just like the others;
though you slow and breathe, you don’t stop.
as time goes on, you notice:
the bright, fake flowers grimace on, stupidly,
as if put there only yesterday,
but
the cardboard wings have aged:
the feathers are dulled,
the edges are worn,
the fringes are ragged;
despite all your hard work,
they are becoming more and more
an organic part of things.
it is the paradox of grief,
always fading,
always and ever new.
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Asides
» There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. -Wendell Berry
» “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” -Barbara Kingsolver
» It’s National Procrastination Week (who comes up with these things?), and in honor of people like me who like to celebrate NPW all year long, here’s a good article.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
You might want to know, since this post may indicate otherwise–I am very happy and content today. This has just been nudging at me for a long time–I’m glad to be done with it.
Wow, this is beautiful. Have you shared it with a wider audience than your blog readers (which I gather is itself quite a wide audience, but I was thinking publication?) I’d love to hear more about the class you took re: ministry through poetry (can’t remember the exact description, but it was something like that.) You really do have a gift.
Also, a personal question– does this draw on your personal experience of grieving for a loved one, or is it inspired in watching/helping others in their own grief processes?
recently i heard that a veteran’s group in some small town has taken on the project of maintaining such highway memorials as part of their mission. of course they also plant flags at veteran’s gravesites for memorial day and participate in memorial day parades, but they also tend other memorials too.
in a way, this poem is a way of tending this memorial, isn’t it?
Oh, thanks, Expat! A couple of my poems are going to be published in a larger collection later this year, but really, this is it for now. But I appreciate the encouragement.
I guess it refers to both personal grief experiences and walking alongside others. I just drive by this place every day, and it always strikes me that I identify with the emotion behind it, but it’s not something I think I would ever feel compelled to do–a side-of-the-road memorial. And then I think about the ritual that is a part of my tradition–the funeral in the Presbyterian Church is called a “Service in Witness to the Resurrection and in Thanksgiving for the Life of …” and I think that must seem equally strange to other people.
nicely done.
there is a bridge that i cross over to return from college #2 that is just covered end to end with stuffed animals and plastic crosses. they are filthy and bedraggled and just hurt to look at. i always wondered what the story was and how long they’ll stay there….they’ve been there all year.
Sorry about the abrupt switch of color scheme, but the watermelon was making me queasy.
The stuffed animals are the worst. The other shrine in our community is one for a teenager who was killed while a passenger in an after-school drag race. You would not believe how busy this street is. Why they thought they could get away with racing down it without killing someone or themselves, well that is a testament to the incredible denial and reckless brio that comes in adolescence.
That particular memorial featured posters with “We’ll Miss You [name]” in cheerleader bubble writing, as well as mountains of stuffed animals. Also a bench.
I find these memorials fascinating (can you tell).
I find the roadside memorials fascinating too. Makes me wonder what the story is, about the person who was killed. Beautiful reflection…. very touching.
Are you sure it’s the watermelon color scheme that’s making you queasy????
I followed the link to your poem from Expatmama’s blog. Kate was right. “grief” goes a long way in capturing the ‘feel’ of these terrible little reminders of our need to stay connected. The idea seemed to have started at the Vietnam Wall in Washington. A basic need in all of us to somehow keep memories of lives lost too early.
I am fascinated with these memorials as well. There was/is some mumblings in our legislature to make them illegal (they’re ugly, trashy, etc, was the reasoning) but thankfully so far it hasn’t happened. You’ve done a beautiful job of capturing these moments.