Even the harried secretary smiles
because everyone has time
for the dead:

for the angular man stripping
the paper from his chewing gum,
each fold a radiant hour

by the lake where he learned to dive,
to trust the buoyancy of his body
rising toward a wavering sky,

for the woman, balding in clumps
beneath her paisley kerchief,
her painted mouth yawning, a sudden arctic bloom.

A name is called, but not mine.
Outside, the Charles turns in a gauzy haze,
rowers wresting their way against the current.

I dream myself to the river, reddened
by overhanging maples,
my braided muscles pulling sweetly on the oars,
my narrow shell slicing cleanly the tethers to this life.

Art Nahill

From What Death Would Be Without Us, Art Nahill, New Spirit Press Chapbook Series,
Kew Gardens, NY, 1994.