Gray Gloved

Stephen Mead

Ashes from the urn are mottled dove white & surprisingly heavy,

a plastic bag of plaster powder when, in the end,

the light of your loneliness weighed less than the rainbow

of some shimmer in spilled gasoline.

Puddles swirl, ripple pearlescent, & at the back of the head,

like a breath, comes the sudden whoosh

of that delicate mourning bird.

Here you are again, an assumption for the ceiling-sky

amid the contours of an air shaped in certainty.

What Waterford crystal for these precious fingers felt!

What exquisite red velvet to shroud love's sacrament!

Ah, how blood is surf of urging, the tides of need to wade in

for the kneeling, & then the arms stretching out,

the palms like reversed lilies for a rebirth in waters glaucous.

It is rubbery when the very spirit pushes out from the bones

& against flesh to once more hold what oath

that cold urn is no more a vessel of.