I am wrestling with demons
whose family resemblance
is unnerving. I don’t know
if the dead have come alive
from pictures or if a family
reunion has been called and I’m
the last to know. But here they
are before me – the most
desirous and the least; of course,
the dead are dead and that’s
a problem for any appeal they
have to the living and why
the what has been always appears
demonic. There are few realities
that survive richly, untattered
into here and now, that eternity
which mocks all time
crying – “Look what has been!”
The words they lived their lives
by as empty then as now. I greet
them, give my response, “I am
that I am.” see ashes to ashes,
dust to dust crumble again.
-Byron Hoot
