Leslie Harrison

[I WOULD DRIVE TO YOUR GRAVE]

I would drive to your grave but your grave is the crash

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• the froth foam pebbles small rocks the sand smoothed
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• soothed each rising each leaving tide you lie in the ocean
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• the water in the waves your home the stern the wake 
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• of a boat those curled white lines of leaving I would
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• visit your grave but your grave is one blue afternoon 
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• of passing isles and granite shores I would come to
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• your grave but your grave is the fire oh mother it is 
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• cold tonight and I have no heart for this burning 
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• for the fine sift of ash which is all that comes back 
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• all that comes after I would visit your house but your things 
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• are missing are missing your touch as your eyes failed 
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• I brought you lights and I would see again that brightness 
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• I would drive to your grave but I am your grave your marker 
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• oh mother I am your stone

LESLIE HARRISON is the author of the poetry collections The Book of Endings and Displacement. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Orion, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Baltimore.