ELEGY FOR MY NIECE

 

I was surprised that you came to visit

that morning in my dream, having departed

this world so suddenly only days before;

but there you were, lying peacefully outside

the plate glass window of that musty basement

apartment I had not entered in years.

Your eyes were bright and smiling, bearing

no weight or bruising from within,

no residue of the earthly sorrow which you tried

continually to numb, to bury, to exchange

for another's on the installment plan

of what became your life. You were just a kid

at that moment, as you had always been,

lounging without care in the long summer grass,

nothing but sunlight and time holding you.

Yet when I stepped slowly toward you,

you floated backward, pulled like a stage prop,

the space between us immovable, solid

as a body neither of us could see or lay claim to;

and when I reached to touch the glass

you were already gone, carried on waves

of what I could not know or save you from.

Dear niece, dear Ophelia, forgive my absence,

for staying on this dry island of earth,

as if these long silent roads were my own,

as if I had any idea where any of them

might eventually lead.