Roadside memorial

I see them everywhere I drive
these days, frail testaments to one
who died (or two or three) right
there in some wreck whose awful
birth has largely been cleaned up
except for a raw gouge in the grass,
a huge dent in the guard-rail.

I see it and my gaze is awakened
for a passing moment from miles
of droll scrub -- a tall plastic cross
festooned with flowers (usually fake
roses or lilacs) bearing a name and
a last day. Sometimes there’s a toy
-- a white stuffed teddy bear, say;
sometimes a rosary hangs on the cross.
Sometimes there’s just a sign that
whispers Drive Careful as I pass ...

If the memorial is along a daily
commute, one sees how fast the
world moves on: the flowers wilt,
the bear turns grey, official hands
remove it entire (they’re illegal in
some spots). It’s frightening to see
how soon a deep fierce gesture
is waved off, grief winding its
peripheral victims on to fates
we cannot see from the road.

Still, there’s one memorial along
my daily commute that has been
renewed again and again
for several years. It’s located next
to some Christian school and
has proclaimed a dead boy’s
name in myriad ways.

At first, styrofoam cups in a chain link
fence spelled it huge and loud.
As winter paled to spring it
was a hand-painted sign above
some flowers which seemed fresh.
Come summer another sign; in fall,
another, both proclaiming “We Miss
You” and his name.

I’ve grown so used to it being
there that I hardly take notice driving
by, surprised each time I look to find
it still there, still maintained, the
flowers still looking fresh-cut.

How fierce the loss must be
of whoever tends that site,
refusing to let a name be lost
from where its owner fell at last;
as if the one lived one because
the other was written again
and again right there.

Perhaps such a memorial
is sick, the tender needing
his or her grief so much
that they tend it like a garden
for our passing gaze
as we the living drive to work
and school and home.

How difficult that task, what
with the dead so quickly erased
by our busy onward lives,
hauled off by oblivion’s
inevitably black tide.
Praise to she (or he) who keeps
alive his memory for us: Whatever
keeps you at that daily toil of
flowering a name over nothingness,

may this song comfort you
when you sleep but not heal you
of your task. I for one rejoice each day
I see that name on that patch of
daily passage.

It tells me how long you can can
yet remain here, brother,
How much yet there is to say
with words fresh as those flowers,
still full and wide open like your smile.