David, December, Rehoboth Beach How all occasions do evoke thee My own Lord Hamlet. Here, beside the sea, With only Philly Airport contrails for clouds, I slip on icy boards and say your name aloud, Because everything evokes thee. Those contrails: Your father, who mapped the moon, regaled Me with their chemistry and their meaning. Your Swiss cousin, who never left off keening, Sends text messages about your mysterious life. After all these years I've heard from your wife Who finally wants the books you left with me. And there's my yearly visit to the tomb Of your mad Ophelia. That keeps the ghost in the room. Beyond all these, your famous sister is another thread That keeps delaying your entry into truly dead For every end of year my ritual is to read Her widower's account of how he freed Himself, a little, from the long pain of her dying. When he said the Heart Sutra her soul went flying. "I had a distinct feeling of a kind of expansion Emanating from the furnace into the room And beyond. Something was being released From Eve's body and expanding into space." For me, for your memory, no such amazing grace, No closing mantra, no sense of you unrestless, Over on the other shore, life and deathless. ********************* Clear winter sunset now. Ho! The horizon takes a roseate glow. Pink's the sand where the whitelets flow. Between the two, a table setting silver blue Darkens to gray. Evoking you.