© Alan Reade, 1994 and 2020
      View the Show Notes


      Dance of Disappearance











      Flame




































































      No Body

      Dear Richard:
      It's strange when someone is really gone--
      When the body's just not there anymore.

      Before your memorial service,
      I helped Alicia dump your ashes
      From the cremation box
      Into the funerary urn, so we could
      Take you out and pour you into the sea--
      The obligatory three miles, of course, in case the
      Coast Guard was watching--
      Anyway, one of the chunks of ash fell out onto
      A plant next to the urn as we were making this transfer,
      And I said,
      "Oops, sorry, Richard."

      And I suddenly realized
      That this wasn't you anymore.
      This pound of ash. This vase of sand.

      The main way I knew you was by your letters,
      Since we lived in separate states:
      The postcards you sent me from California and New Orleans,
      With poems and elaborate drawings in colored ink;
      Things that didn't seem
      Determined or tainted by time.
      I still have them around my house.
      So, in many ways,
      It feels as though you're still alive--
      Even as the ink loses its color day by day.

      Like paper, the body fades;
      But the word, the spirit, stays.
      And I'm at a memorial service,
      Hoping you're there, somewhere,
      Watching.