I Buried My Father Twice

For a second I thought I heard singing, the middle-aged voices of the Lutheran church choir, the familiar hymns from my father’s second

funeral, the one with a corpse, solid as wax, displayed in an open casket as evidence that we really meant it this time, this was no

exercise.  Melting glaciers reveal missing people but he was not among the found.  For 13 years we searched the river’s edge, pool hall alley-

ways, the basement of his first wife’s house, dental records and diary entries but there was nothing to unearth, not a shred of clothing

or bone fragment to fill the pine box.   For a second I thought I heard singing, the collected voices from six school musicals, Mendelssohn’s

wedding march on the day I walked my sister down the aisle, the crystal bell cries at his third grand-child’s baptism, but it was the telephone

ringing at 3 am, my father’s voice from his first empty grave, I got lost he said, but now I’ve come back home, where are you, where did everybody go?