Poem of the Week, by Carl Dennis
Yesterday I went to the funeral of a man my age. He was a man who, within minutes of meeting him, would tell you he was a Marine –present tense, not past–a man who signed all his memos semper fi. I stood in front of the photo boards his children and wife had assembled, taking photos of photos with my cell phone.
There he was, laughing with his babies, his wife, his dog. There he was dancing with his ancient mother, wearing one of his spectacular ties. A complicated man who didn’t speak of his combat experience, a man who was always, according to one of the young Marines he had quietly mentored during and after their tours of duty, “the guy.” The guy who anticipated what would be needed, whether for a road trip or a party or a combat operation, and provided it. The guy that the other young Marines went to for private advice and free counsel. The guy who tried his best to keep everyone else safe. I hope, in his life, there were times when he himself felt safe. When I woke up this morning I thought of this poem.
Candles
– Carl Dennis
If on your grandmother’s birthday you burn a candle
to honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra
to honor the memory of someone who never met her,
a man who may have come to the town she lived in
looking for work and never found it.
Picture him taking a stroll one morning,
after a month of grief with the want ads,
to refresh himself in the park before moving on.
Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards
of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,
then still a girl, will be destined to step on
when she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic
if he doesn’t stoop down and scoop the mess up
with the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.
For you to burn a candle for him
you needn’t suppose the cut would be a deep one,
just deep enough to keep her at home
the night of the hay ride when she meets Helen,
who is soon to become her dearest friend,
whose brother George, thirty years later,
helps your grandfather with a loan so his shoe store
doesn’t go under in the Great Depression
and his son, your father, is able to stay in school
where his love of learning is fanned into flames,
a love he labors, later, to kindle in you.
How grateful you are for your father’s efforts
is shown by the candles you’ve burned for him.
But today, for a change, why not a candle
for the man whose name is unknown to you?
Take a moment to wonder whether he died at home
with friends and family or alone on the road,
on the look-out for no one to sit at his bedside
and hold his hand, the very hand
it’s time for you to imagine holding.
Once, at a Twins play-off game, I sat next to an older couple. They opened a tote and pulled out sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, peeled carrots, small bags of grapes, and cookies. Dinner, packed at home and brought to the game. There was something about this couple I loved.
That woman sitting on the bar stool with a martini and a magazine, or alone on her couch spinning imaginary people into books, or flying solo around the world: she is me. But won’t you be lonely? is a question I’ve heard a lot in my life, and I don’t know how to answer it, because isn’t everyone, somewhere inside themselves, lonely? 
One of my best friends and I sat on my porch last night talking about how our lives might have been different. What if I’d made myself deal with that suicide instead of trying to escape the pain? What if she’d said yes to that job? What if I’d stayed in New England? What if we’d mothered our children differently?
Two lovely Japanese maple trees in a front yard one block south are symmetrically planted amid cement squares filled with small white stones. For eight years I walked past this house every day, so I could admire the way the owners, whom I always pictured as two calm men, swept the leaves and raked the stones into perfect, weed-free squares. Looking at this yard calmed my spirit. A few years ago the house was sold, and since then it has been reclaimed by wildness.
When I was nine my father brought me a huge, bright-green, horned bug from our garden: Look! You can bring it in to school for the bug project! When he turned away I placed some tomatoes on top of the bug, and later had to admit in shame that I had ‘accidentally’ crushed it. Alison! What the hell were you thinking? 
Old friend, it has been decades since that last summer before college, the last time I ever lived at home. But when I return to visit my parents and drive by the street where you once lived, I remember you. I remember rain on a canvas roof, darkness all around, the silent sleeping breath of other friends. I remember how surprised I was that someone wanted to kiss me –me?–and I remember your gentleness. Let me tell you now that you were the one who first showed me how touch could open up a new world. At seventeen I could not have known how the memory of that fleeting sweetness would sustain me in future dark times. This achingly beautiful poem brought back the memory of you. 
Alison McGhee 