Funeral home visitation is today in Waycross. Family will gather and try to comfort one another throughout the necessary arrangements. Once the formality subsides and we've all tracked back down our separate paths, comfort may be sought in the souvenirs Charles left behind.
Charles Rafferty
Twenty years ago, the skeleton
of a wild pig gleamed among violets
while the leaf rot around it
grew hot with spring. I slipped
the molar out of its grin like an oiled key
and took it home, leaving the boar to reassemble, if it ever did,
at a gap-toothed resurrection. I hold it up t
to show my daughters. They are less
impressed each year. I have antlers
and trilobites and chips of pretty bedrock
from all the places where the sun came up
to burn me awake with beauty—even
a turtle shell we used as an ashtray
in that first apartment, on the bank
of a creek that flooded every March
and took our trash to sea. All of it
sleeps in a basement box—a kind of coffin
for my former life, but also a proof
that I stooped to the world,
that I kept what came my way.
Charles Rafferty
Twenty years ago, the skeleton
of a wild pig gleamed among violets
while the leaf rot around it
grew hot with spring. I slipped
the molar out of its grin like an oiled key
and took it home, leaving the boar to reassemble, if it ever did,
at a gap-toothed resurrection. I hold it up t
to show my daughters. They are less
impressed each year. I have antlers
and trilobites and chips of pretty bedrock
from all the places where the sun came up
to burn me awake with beauty—even
a turtle shell we used as an ashtray
in that first apartment, on the bank
of a creek that flooded every March
and took our trash to sea. All of it
sleeps in a basement box—a kind of coffin
for my former life, but also a proof
that I stooped to the world,
that I kept what came my way.