(for Patricia Beach Smith)

Some of your many loved ones
gathered on a windy Monday
to watch your final journey,

lowered smoothly into the ground
next to a friend, becoming
interred neighbors—a sweet

bit of kinship since you had
helped the man’s widow
select that spot under the leafy

umbrella under which you, too,
will lie for eternity. Then life went on,
as it does. Some of us headed

to your house as we’d so often
done for gatherings of friends
you loved to host. And if we

thought you wouldn’t be there,
we were wrong. You drifted through
doorways, hovered in the scarves

and jewelry you left for friends
to choose and take with us.
But I lingered at your mini grand

piano, where, on the music shelf
above the keyboard rested
the romantic third movement

of “Scheherazade,” wishing you
were there to play it. You,
opera singer, writer, storyteller.

If you’d return for 1,001 nights,
staving off death like the young bride
telling tales to her sultan husband,

I’d sit with you on the bench as you
played, every note a blessing,
preserving the illusion of forever.