"A Scattering" by Richard Weaver

A salt-heavy voice

surfs the waves.

Morning slows

as wind counts,

first its reluctant fingers,

then its webbed toes.

Your ashes sank

or took to the wind.

But the urn floats.

Not defiant. Buoyed.

Unlike you.

Not yet ready

to make an exit.

The author hopes to return as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other pubs: Conjunctions, Steel Toe Review, Southern Quarterly, Xavier Review, Loch Raven Review, Poetry Magazine, & New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and provided the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). Recently, his 170th prose poem was published. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry.