Diamond Dogs (this poem contains ashes)

 "Diamond Dogs" by Jane Bloomfield

Dad’s ashes linger in the lost property box

of memories and bone fragments

a small wooden one

under the bed

An average sized man weighs: 2.72 kilograms when cremated

No BS

I googled it

Six pounds Imperial (the weight of my firstborn daughter)

Dad sometimes joked about going out in an old-pine-box

But he ended up in faux walnut veneer

Under a giddy spray of red and white roses

Addam’s Family ivy crept over its silver plastic handles

Two pm sun filtered through stained glass saints

In that tiny wooden church in Leigh and winked upon

Michael, Son of the Archdeacon of Hawkes Bay lying there

I always wondered if you get bits of coffin

with your dearly departed’s ashes?

You don’t

The materials used in those vessels to-the-other-side

are designed to be totally zapped by the heat

Cremation ovens spike to

926.666 degrees Celcius –

It’s a fucking inferno in there

But you’re still left with sticks of burnished bones

I know, I saw the photo on an undertaker’s website

It offered so much helpful information

Things you never knew you wanted to know

Like: post cremation “The bone fragments are further crushed”

Once they’ve gone through a magnetic scanner to remove metal implants

gold fillings, screws

I’d discovered modern day grave robbing

Or do they give those cadaver-jewells back?

There was an ad for Life Gem Diamonds

How much do I need? The top FAQ

“Just 200 grams of cremated remains,

to extract enough carbon to make multiple diamonds …

typically all the diamonds that a family wants.”

Marilyn M would turn in her grave

I never read the comments section

But there were so many satisfied customers

Take Jacqueline, Linda and Sam

Who in brackets

Were not wife, or partner, or husband

But OWNER

of Jerry, Midnight and Champ

The most popular gems, it appeared

were dead-doggy-diamonds

Diamond dogs

Dad was a cat man

A naval man

A modest man

Most family members want to scatter his ashes at sea

His partner wants to out in the glass bottomed boat

I have visions of his pebbles floating underneath us

As we glide over the reef

And hungry snapper from the nearby marine reserve

nibbling him then spitting him out

dry calcium phosphates, sodium and potassium hardly a meal

But for now

he remains

lingering

under

the

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bed

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