ALEXANDRIA QUARTERLY

 MIKE LEWIS-BECK

FIRST-BORN

Instead of the red brick road I took back
alleys to the Brown Street Cemetery
where we buried our first-born, Gavin,
now at rest next to his mother, long dead too.

Today, his birthday—the 39th— I recall
that Jack Benny joke, one that Gavin
never knew, about the eternal 39th birthday,
always a good line for a friend’s card.

On his red granite headstone, I scattered
scylla from our backyard, along with first chives.
Over the way a parka pulled a sniffing schnauzer
while a couple jogged by, excited about a 10 K.

I left, past another child’s stone I knew,
made of broken cement and stuck marbles—
cateyes, orange swirls, steelies. It took shade;
the grave still had blotches of April snow.

Ambling the bumpy cemetery terrain,
I headed for coffee at Goosetown hardware.
Fell upon a tractor tire planter with a buddha,
a skinny one from Thailand.

Me, I like the fat ones, Lucky Buddhas
some Chinese say. At coffee a stranger
named Maya tells me she’s writing a poem
today, for her husband’s birthday.

GAVIN’S HEADSTONE, VERMONT CUT

Clark Gavin
son of
Michael S. Lewis-Beck
&
J. Arline Lewis-Beck,
DIED
September 26, 1981.
Æ.
2 y’s. 5m’s. & 15 d’s

OUTLASTING GRIEF*

After she died an urge came,
coming despite my death in all but name,
a name now hers in granite forever
chiseled on a Mississippi headstone.

The urge, physical, for love—
union on land or sea—
like chopping wood
to a beat,
like the stone rhyme from a blind man’s cane.

But those green cords don’t stack high;
they splinter memory,
like her chemo drip tubes and my grieving:

the cold coupling, the numbness, the leaving.

*This poem appears in Rural Routes from AQP

Mike Lewis-Beck writes from Iowa City. He has pieces in Alexandria Quarterly, American Journal of Poetry, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Guesthouse, Pure Slush, Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues. He has a book of poems, Rural Routes, recently publishedby Alexandria Quarterly Press. This year he received a Finalist award for the poem, “The Way the Music Died,” (Palm Beach Poetry Festival Ekphrastic Contest, 2019).