--YOU ARE SO PHOTOGENIC

I Call Your Name

I search for you

in garden soil

the color of coffee beans,

where it’s sandy in places,

clay-like in others.

I use my bare hands,

careful not to cut you with a spade or hoe.

I free worms from their squiggly fetal positions.

There are rocks and bigger rocks,

a swath of petrified electrical tape,

the arm of a G.I. Joe,

something that might once have been a wrist watch.

I dig for hours

until my scalp is scalded and my shirt is a damp sheet that reeks.

I hum your favorite Dylan tune as I scrape and carve away clumps of dirt,

my fingernails cracked and bleeding.

I call your name.

I sing it.

I use your name and tell you how wonderful you are and always will be.

I use your name and say it’s not your fault about what happened.

I use your name the way some people use pillows, baths or comfort food,

and I use it selfishly, just as the broken must when medicating in mourning.

By nightfall

I’m sore and too exhausted to move anymore.

Breathing hurts.

A headache burrows through my right ear

while my bones scream at me for my foolishness,

because I knew I wouldn’t find you here,

not here

or even in a casket somewhere.

When they brought you back from the war

you were only medals and army gear,

a bundle of the photographs you’d taken along

 and a few well-read letters.

They said the explosion was massive,

that the fire engulfing you had been a monster to put out.

They said how sorry they were for my loss.

Now I weep for you under a milk-blue moon.

I call your name,

then I don’t.

Instead I shout a father’s cry, “Son!  Son, I miss you so much!”

I yell it over and over,

praying you can hear me and

that heaven is real after all.