That

Corea, Maine.
That. Yes.
A chubby fingertip
on a map says so.

May 2009.
That, too, we think.
There is a calendar
somewhere.

Some things require less
thinking to be true.

Some things require more
thinking, better footwear,
beauty before age,
swine before pearls,
to find their way onto
the same continent as
the truth.

C’est la vie.
C’est.
Quoi?

That.
That photograph.
That? we wonder.
Touch it, and it will not say.
She will not speak to you.

We can make our guesses,
of course. That is one that
that can’t be helped. Guesswork
is to human as gossip is to human
as to wondering where the socks and
toenail clippings go is to human.

Fine. We’ll choose human.
Mustn’t always complain.

As humans, we can sigh.
Oh, lovely! Good on her!
Smiles! About time!

We can turn up our noses.
Why her? Don’t you know
about her? How she came
to be there?

What we do with that
says more about us
than it does
the photograph.

Better not to comment
at all. Better still to
slip your feet into
the shoes you see.
Maine water, that much
we know. Cold. Those
shoes of hers will never
be the same again.

Better still to slip behind
the smile. The dark blur
of the shoreline is waiting
there for us, along with
an evergreen or two.

The bag?
Could be she’s covering something.
Could be she’s full. Pregnant
with shells, bones, blood,
seaweed, hair, soda can tabs,
the history of everything that
once moved her and will never
move her again.

And so,
a bag. That bag.

Don’t. You mustn’t.
Instead, take the bag.
We can wear it for her. If we look
inside, we will see that this
was never that.

And when we look back at
the photograph, she will be
gone. The photo, now a postcard.
Wish.

We can look and look. But
the chilly waters have swallowed
her footprints, and the current
will betray nothing.

There we go, guessing again,
ruminating, bovine humans.
We must understand what we
never will: that is
beyond our comprehension.
So is this.

Farewell, comprehension.
This human life can only be
lived with compassion, passion,
and compassion for the passionate.

This:
Loving what we love,
missing what we believed we were.

That:
Choosing what we choose,
mourning what we do not choose,
know we will not choose.

This and that.
This and that are all we have.