August Dream

Yun Wang
| poetry

 

Why was my father wearing a blue formal jacket
when it was so hot? It was summer in Oklahoma
and over a hundred degrees. He wanted to know

where he was. I explained that he could not return
to this world since his body no longer existed.

He seemed relieved. I saw him being cremated
three years before as they played “The Rebirth
of the Phoenix” on rustic trumpets.

I buried his ashes in a white jade box on a mountain.

Yun Wang is the author of poetry books The Book of Jade (Winner of the 15th Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, Storyline Press, 2002), and The Book of Totality (Salmon Poetry Press, 2015), as well as The Carp (Bull Thistle Press, 1994). She is a cosmologist at Caltech.

Next
Face on Mars
Previous
Spring