Probably, Frieda mixed his ashes in cement
She used for the phoenix altar in the chapel.
A couple of decades later, she was buried
Full-length before the white chapel's door.
The whole concatenation of revenants stood
Now at the top of a zig-zagging sidewalk
Through the cedars above the ranch house,
Twenty-five hundred meters, give or take,
Above sea level, looking west over slopes
That fell swiftly to scrublands and the gorge
Of El Rio Grande del Norte. How in the hell
Could the thin air have been thought to help
His consumption? I stared at the phoenix,
His totem, wishing the ashes to reassemble
And the man to step out of the crumbling
Cement, looking uncertain and bemused.
We're good at disintegration and brilliant
At faded monuments, but we're impossible
When it comes to resurrection, we are.
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