WEBVTT

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OK, just three more.

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"My Father's Ashes."

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The urn was so heavy,
small but so heavy,

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I could hardly lift it.

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Like the time, weeks before
he died, when he needed to pee

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and I helped to lift him.

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Got my shoulder unto his
armpit, my cheek along his naked

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freckled one back,
while he fumbled

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in front with the urinal.

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He had lost half
his body weight,

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and yet he was so heavy, we
could hardly hold him up,

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till he got the fluid out
crackling and sputtering

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like a gold fire.

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The small stainless urn had that
same kind of final heaviness.

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It warmed slowly
to my touch, as I

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stood rubbing it under
the blue fig tree,

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stroking it as I had stroked
his skin after he died,

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in firm, steady circles.

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Near us, the shovel got the
last dirt out of the grave.

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It must have made that
same gritty scraping

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noise, when we scraped his
ashes out of the grate.

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The others would
be here any minute,

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and I wanted to open the urn
as if then I would finally

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know him.

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And the wet line under the
trees, with their small cones

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sealed in a heavy
cloak of rosin.

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I tore my nails trying
to open the thing.

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recessed central top
like his humidor lid.

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I clawed at it
like someone trying

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to escape from a stone
cell with their bare hands,

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and then it gave and
slipped off easily.

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And there it was, the
actual murder of this Earth.

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Small, speckled balls of foam
like tiny eggs, a darkened bent

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curl of bone like a
black fungus arching

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to fit the curve of a branch.

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Spotted pebbles,
and the spots where

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the channels of his marrow,
where the living orbs

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of the molecules
swam powerfully,

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as if by their own strong will.

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And then each cell
the chromosomes

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tensed, and flashed.

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Tore themselves
away from themselves

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like lovers, leaving
their shining duplicates.

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I looked at the jumble of
shards, like a crushed hive,

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the mass of broken order, was
that the bone of his wrist?

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Was that from the large elegant
knee he had bent in the sun

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and flexed in the
water over and over?

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Was that his jaw?

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His skull that at
birth was flexible yet.

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I stood and loved him,
bone and the ash it lay in.

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Silvery white as the
shimmering coils of dust

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the Earth leaves
behind it as it rolls.

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You can hear its heavy
roaring as it rolls away.

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[APPLAUSE]

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