For Peggy Munson

Unmourn, unmourn, unfather, unson.
What you’ve lost is what you’ve got,
what you aren’t the only mirror

in which you can see you are—
something, a glow on the horizon
or some more intimate flicker,

a match struck
against the forehead of darkness, the glimmer
kindled in the corner of an eye

tilting toward the sun.
There’s something beautiful in your burning,
an auburn grandeur in your ashes,

a blaze of grief
in your damp, crushed tresses.
Do you know what to do

with your beauty? Has anyone taught you
to unfurl your fingers, not the fingers you have
but the fingers you are,

little clenched fist
dangling from the sleeve of being?
You’ve learned to be quite clever

about losing parents and children,
you’ve learned to like the click and clatter
of the slivers of self you scatter

as yet another version shatters,
you’ve become a virtuoso mourner,
cycling through stages of grief

like a high-speed washer—rush
of gallons of icy water, a cough, a silence,
the keen of meshing gears of loss

whirling faster and faster. What’s left comes out
crumpled but clean,
sopping and clueless, not wanting

to be or to feel anything
but what trickles from its fibers
naturally. Just you and water

and the child-like tug
of gravity
pulling water from the heart of water

beating in your sleep, and nothing,
not the tiniest
whimper of a clue

about what to do
with your beauty.