Intelligible

My name a rearing horse, curved into
its evolution. Logographic,

four legs like drops of sweat falling
from a shaking body.

The etymological—or is it orthographical—
origin of the word clear is the word blue-green.

Radical : water : drops from a brush
on a page, swishing into newness, so

becoming : the clarity we use for death.
Semantic-phonetic, each stroke’s symbiosis

of sound and meaning. A morpheme
rather than a phoneme. Clear morning,

we greet our dead and deathly, send gifts
for the moving-on. Not darkness, nor night :

our dead aren’t afraid of the day’s blue face.
May our dead float back to this thin surface, deep

blue to bluegreen to clear. I see the way the light
moves through the water. The way the light moves

through. What is it you do to honor your dead
in the after? In an account I read, you burn them,

too. We all need something to carry
into the next world. It’s watery edge. I know

what I said : I don’t believe in any next thing.
Yet I see ghosts, see memory. Look how I am

haunted. The smoke like a clot in my lung.
Shh, shh, drink now. The water is cool.

Rinse the ash from your face.

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