(Published in Entrances & Exits)
Pink dolphins have been swimming through Amazon trees
in my mind for days, rose-colored bodies sluicing triangle
rivulets behind them; the poem you gave us in American Lit,
my freshman year, still flowing through my thoughts.
We sweep into the chapel nave in singles and pairs,
grim smiles spread across our faces at recognition,
but we are slow to move together, limbs heavy and
awkward in shared grief. In the chapel, your colleagues
and students bear witness to the colorful open prairie
of your life, the soft waving grass of your learned
vulnerability, wide-hilled arms open to the sky; the sharpness
of your bare-limbed wit; the golden luminescence
of light too immense for the body. We draw close
to the sounds you loved, the bluegrass that filled
your last days with twangy-sweetness, Mary O and Wendell B.,
and of course, Walt, always Walt. The light in the chapel
is its ever-brilliant rainbow of colors through stain-glassed
seasons, and everyone speaks of light, the way your life
was filled with it, the way your light will linger on,
in each of us. In this light, I can imagine your body
transforming, muscles exuberant with release, pink-tinged
sleek skin blending into the blazing dusk of the setting Amazon sun.
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