Elliott

Today is Elliott's funeral.

He is twenty-years

-ten-months-

and-twenty-three

-days-old

according

to the minister who droned through the twenty-third psalm at the prayer service

last night.

I warm to myth

although it's frightening

Eighth grade,

Elliott is ADD

and Caleb, labeled

Gifted

They make an odd pair:

Elliott, 5 feet

Caleb, 6 feet 5

Elliott, adopted

Caleb, his mother's prize

The three of us drive

this highway everyday.

We pass the anti-abortion

billboard.

It's a yard ornament

in a politically active

farmer's front yard

This month

the image pasted-

up depicts

a rotted fetus

in a woman's outstretched

hand. Her nails are perfectly

painted red.

The caption reads

God knows all that you do

What was that character's name

in the Great Gatsby?

The music plays too loudly,

the corn, on either side

of the shoulderless roadway,

looms, an unbroken wall

of green. The sky scintillate.

A few clouds cast quick

shadows that run ahead of us

across the landscape.

We pass our opinions

to our kids.

Caleb scoffs at the image.

Elliott is quiet.

The music roars,

the car flashes east,

the wind sends the clouds wherever it blows them,

And then he speaks,

and the story is all cliche,
except the part when
his grandparents get political,
pound an "it's a boy"
sign in the sixteen-year-old,
rich jock's yard. Unless that's
cliche, too.

She could have aborted me.
Those who consider their lives accidental.

Baptism is language.

We're a group

of adults driving east.

Then four years pass.

Then an ice-blue dawn sky.

Then the car rises-up

like a monster

writhing from earth

and leaps into the air

and it's too late

and it's always dark

and Elliott is a little drunk

and they've all just graduated

from high school

and the minister browbeats

us, everyone one of us,

for over an hour

and the car writhes

and Myrtle couldn't stop Tom

and Elliott couldn't stop Myrtle

and he was born

and now he's dead

and today is his funeral

in a church the shape of Noah's Ark