American Life in Poetry

I once attended a memorial service at which a friend’s ashes were put in the Platte River at first light, just as thousands of Sandhill Cranes were lifting off the water, crying. Flowing water has just what it takes to carry someone away in fine style. Here’s a poem by Kyle Harvey, who lives in Colorado.

You’d been gone four months by then,

but we brought you along anyway.

On my back, you rested

riding inside a wooden box.

The idea was to lay you gently

at the water’s surface,

but our clumsy hands spilled you,

and it was hard to tell whether you went head

or feet first, but it didn’t much matter

anyway, I suppose.

You would float on down the creek

until you had reached the next and so on.

My father gave a little wave and joked,

“We’ll see you back on down in Denver, Dad.”

We stood there in silence

listening to you chuckle

under the bridge and over

the first set of riffles downstream.