Thinking the Dead have the answers
– that if we could speak to them
they would give us the knowledge
we have not yet acquired in living –
I pray to a formerly flawed human
who I long thought of as a saint,
asking for guidance, asking for help,
forgiveness and wants of the living.
I summon my ancestors, my father,
men I once loved who left too soon
when all I had needed was to ask
myself the admittedly trite cliché:
what would you do if it were you?
What path becomes best if breaths
become numbered? Well they are.
Here is the funny thing: the dead
and the alive, as it turns out, we
tend to share the same answer.

(written in 2018; edited for ColetteKay.com)