You can’t really picture the place.
You don’t recall who was there.
But you remember surprise
That human ashes are not powdery dust,
Apt to disintegrate like snow,
Or soft like bread cast upon the waters.
Dad’s ashes chafed your palms like jagged seeds
As you clutched fistfuls from a plastic purple box
And flung them down a hillside
Somewhere in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
And you remember the feeling of urgency
As you retreated up the hill.
You had motions to go through,
Space to occupy,
A black and white landscape to walk
Among small figures filing along a dirt track
In the airless September heat.