Applegate (poem)

Applegate

Under a warm sun in a blue sky
we spread my mother's ashes in the Applegate
at her favorite fishing hole.

This was a special place.
When we returned, we knew we'd find her
perched on a rock
line dangling in the river
crossword puzzle in her lap
oblivious to all cares
(oblivious even to the fish)
This was the way we wanted
to remember her.

But it was not to be.

Years later I returned
(living far away)
and struggled to find the spot
finally driving through rain
along a new road by a lake
brown and foreboding
against a dam.

I rented a boat
but no matter where I rowed
I had no sense of her rock
or the fishing hole
or her spirit below me.

How I wish we'd given her
a marked stone in the golf course
of a cemetery.

Graveyards belong
to the living.

--Charles Deemer