The Morning Reading: "All that a human is made of is gold"

I spent this morning at the edge of March Air Force Base at the Riverside National Cemetery attending the services for a dear friend's mother. That blue sky was big out there today with clouds piling up at the edges. We'd been under that sky before many times together - here, there, everywhere. And today we were again, this time there. Once, on Santa Barbara Island, he took this photo of my son.



This poem isn't right for the occasion - but then again, in some way, in some lines, it is, it is.

Dear Friend
by Dean Young


What will be served for our reception
in the devastation? Finger food, of course
and white wine, something printed on the napkins.

We were not children together
but we are now. Every bird knows
only two notes constantly rearranged.

That’s called forever so we wear pajamas
to the practice funeral, buckeroos
to the end. We make paper hats
of headlines and float them away.

My home made of smoke,
tiny spider made of punctuation,
my favorite poem is cinder
scratched into a sidewalk.

My friend’s becoming the simplest man,
he sees a lesson in everything,
in missing his train,
in his son hollering from the first branch,
Dad, guess where I am.

I was with him for my first magpies,
governmental and acting like hell.
And the new nickel
with Washington hard to recognize.

We’d driven by a Rabbit flattened
by an upset truck, jars of Miracle Whip
broken over the toll road in heavy snow.

We watched an old lady
eat a hot dog in a bun
with a knife and fork.

A few emeralds winged off
a fruit leaf.

What happens when your head splits open
and the bird flies out, its two notes deranged?
You got better, I got better,
wildflowers rimmed the crater,
glitter glitter glitter.

We knew someone whose father died
then we knew ourselves.
Astronomer, gladiator,
thief, a tombstone salesman.

All our vacations went to the sea
that breathed two times a day
without a machine.
We got in trouble with a raft
doing what we promised not to.

Further out to be brought further back.

There’s my friend in his squashed hat
trying to determine if a dot
is a living thing and do no harm.

He’s having trouble remembering street names
but there’s still plenty of Thoreau.

All that a human is made of is gold,
very very little gold.


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