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The Interment
by Tim Liardet
The Interment - Tim Liardet
The Interment
When you saved me, father, saved me from drowning
though the Atlantic that tried to drown me called me back
I spent an hour burning my shoulders to bury you in sand
from your chin to your toes, while you lay like a dead man
snoozing with crazy hair and a fag in your mouth,
as thin as a rake. It felt like an act of commitment
as thin as a rake. It felt like an act of commitment
to bury you, to dredge the moat around you deeper
and deeper, leaving your head exposed and smoke to rise.
and deeper, leaving your head exposed and smoke to rise.
I was kept ashore for safety, but wanted to wade back
into the glimmering—where light perched, it tilted and dipped.
Now I had a new mother, I thought, who’d taught me
the vitality of fear which felt like reverence,
the vitality of fear which felt like reverence,
I needed to do it well, tamping from end to end:
to bury my father, who snoozed, in a dolmen of wet sand.
to bury my father, who snoozed, in a dolmen of wet sand.
from Priest Skear (Shoestring Press, 2010), © Tim Liardet 2010, used by permission of the author