Tina Cane

Letters From The Sky

When a shell casing from the twenty-one-gun salute at my father's funeral arrives

it will be engraved with his name and relevant dates and given to his next of kin

and when his wife presses it into my hand I will not hold it to my ear to hear waves

breaking like my father's fading drawl a final time on the telephone line I will peer instead

inside its shallow depth to explore its nothingness in search of some residual force or silent

report to insist upon a truth

that war blew apart the man's life to the point

he could barely even watch the news that such a small space should accommodate

a belief as deep as duty is indeed a special kind of magical thinking

for a spent bullet

cannot be anything other than what it is hollow or not all I've got is this ritual and a dad

AWOL for fifty years now finally gone for good

good that I skipped his service

on purpose to be alone with my grief apt that having missed him in life

I should see him now in the sky of my mind drifting like a cloud magical and also good

that he be impervious to bullets flying where energies align with messages beyond my reach

Tina Cane is the founder/ director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI. From 2016-2024, she served as Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books include: Once More With Feeling, Body of Work, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, and Year of the Murder Hornet.

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