Do the dead keep their names?

The nettle thinks so,

Though the dandelion does not.

It says,

‘Whether Melvin and his loving wife

And (improbably) mother were people

Or the sum of yesterdays expired, then

They are now not dead.

Their fictive passing begs first of all a question of fixity, and of fate.”

If they were alive once, the nettle rebuts,

It was through first of all a sense of will

And not a will of senses;

‘True, but then we must ask whether they,

Since ’31 defunct, were not borrowing against the future the way that atoms

Seem to see themselves alive first..”

Then, the dandelion interrupts, they are only alive

Now, in memory,

Not, he hastens to add,

In the memories that preserve

Tobacco-stained fingers, coffee-stained teeth, sun-stained hair,

But in the stain of memory fading they grow to life.’

My grandmother died this year,

And I talked to her after the funeral like I couldn’t in years.

I didn’t need to explain to her why I laughed, gasping,

When my niece asked why they bothered to seal her urn,

Her parentheses were wars. Her stains were tea.

And before I can let the memory go, before she can be real,

I need to hear her laughter

At the inanity of the talk of weeds.