Aunt Wilma Forces Me
..to Plant a Gardenia
on Lorena’s Grave
Aunt Wilma is second from the left
What happens to a voice when it is dead?
The vocal cords will rot, of course, the lungs
Will shrivel, wither. In a coffin bed
The voice will evanesce like ancient tongues:
The Indus Valley’s writing scheme is glossed
By silence. No one now alive can speak
It or decode its symbols. It is mossed
Away by millennia. Voice is meek
And doesn’t try to stretch beyond our lives.
It can’t be propped up by a Shakespeare play.
The overwhelming muteness of the voice strives
To be more permanent than graveyard gray.
Not only wet-breathed words have disappeared
But my aunts’ throats and clay have now cohered.