The World’s Other Side

In Japan, when you die, they wheel
what’ s left of you out of the incinerator,
and what’ s left of your family takes turns
picking with special chopsticks.
It looks like they have gathered to dine
over a dead campfire, but they are not,
of course, eating you. They are feeding you
to the round mouth of an urn:
only in pieces, Father, to the fire.
In their bright swimsuits,
my daughters spill warm sand over my skin
as I lie still, watching the sun
needle the sky. The baby licks her fingers
to tell, perhaps, if I am ready, her bald head
white with lotion, her mouth full
of vowels. The older one says nothing
above the ocean’ s slow rush,
but scoops and pats to get me done
and gone. I’ ve never been to Japan,
but once, a globe of glass
found me at the clear end of a wave.
It drifted from the other side, my mother said.
Cold and slick, it glistened as I held it up
with both hands and looked through
to the green flames of the sun
before tasting the salt with my tongue.