Matthew Kirby

Backyard Burial

Water Line

He’d asked for a backyard burial:

bone-white jowl to resinous pine,

out by the northern property line;

shale-studded dirt divided by sons

quickly, before the approaching squall.

A black plastic leaf bag, stuffed with ones,

was pretty much all he’d leave behind,

besides drawings he’d made half out of his mind

in charcoal on urethaned masonite

of girls on dirt bikes carrying guns.

He’d asked them to do it clean and right

in the somber manner outlined above

and to take it as evidence of his love

for this rutted-out world that looks better when wet,

works better when people are less uptight.

He’d asked, but hadn’t received one yet,

alive as he was, the bloom of health,

and flush with plenty of liquid wealth.

He patrolled the streets like Tom Cavendish

in his 1979 Corvette

with his dachshund, Trish,

and his girlfriend, Rex,

in a manner that left his sons perplexed.

He continued to live and would not die

as he, or anyone else, might wish,

though he longed to repose where the grass grew high.

A nearly empty bus pulls up

beside the bay

on a kelp-strewn street that fronts

a battered quay.

Actuaries count the boats

sunk in the mud,

sum the accidental beauty

of this flood.

The cop on duty scans the sea

as if for storms.

Too late to save the past, she guards

eternal forms.

Matthew Kirby’s poems and essays have appeared in various periodicals, recently, Literary Matters, Rain Taxi, and Dappled Things. He is the managing editor of Our Sunday Visitor.