We Beg You

This week, The Washington Post

Began running a series

On America’s unclaimed

Bodies, ashes in plastic

Urns dropped off by minivans

For burials in a trench,

And other, similar, ends,

Thousands and thousands of them.

There but for the grace of God

We all could be, the writers

Quote one chaplain. There we are,

The bodies named and unnamed,

But what of all of your ghosts?

Imagine the hordes of them,

All the words these bodies said

Or thought or read while alive,

Less in evidence even

Than the bodies that said them.

Now, that would be a haunting—

The gestures and the whispers

On the wind of everyone

Who died alone and unclaimed,

Leaving the bodies behind

For other bodies to find,

Gone traveling, wandering

In search of emptier lands

Where thoughts might whirl together

Like leaves in conversation.

You may have stumbled on them

Once or twice, world’s end somewhere,

When you thought you were alone,

Then saw shadows signaling,

Heard some rapid whispering.

Meanings are the only things

Completely out of nowhere

That can come into being,

But we do so at the cost

Of being doomed to leaving.

Let us linger while we can.