Home ›Poetry ›His Wife’s Ashes
Clean Reader click for a
cleaner page the
usual page

published November 2009

David Shumate is the author of High Water Mark (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), winner of the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and The Floating Bridge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.) His poetry has appeared widely in literary journals and has been anthologized in The Writer’s Almanac, Good Poems for Hard Times and The Best American Poetry 2007. He is the recipient of a 2009 NEA Poetry Fellowship. He teaches at Marian University in Indianapolis and lives in Zionsville, Indiana.

His Wife’s Ashes

by

When the old man famous for radishes showed up at the com­mu­nity gar­den with his wife’s ashes in an urn, we gath­ered round for a short eulogy. He recalled that late night three decades ago when filled with hap­pi­ness she stepped onto the lawn in her bra and panties and sang a lit­tle Verdi. And the time she spoke to a dying man in French so he could feel he’d breathed his last breath on the streets of Paris as he’d always hoped he’d do. And that IRS agent who sam­pled her spaghetti car­bonara and a week later a let­ter arrived say­ing he must have mis­placed the paper­work. She came to the gar­den once in her final days. Wheelchair bound. Wearing a long white dress as if she’d been injured at some soirée. She pointed to where she would like her ashes scat­tered. A lit­tle by the radishes. A lit­tle by the can­taloupe. The rest in the tomato patch. So her fla­vor would linger all the way through to frost.

All rights reserved © 2009