Elegy for Mr. Spock
by W. Todd Kaneko
(published in Split Lip Magazine, August 2018)
The first time you died, your friends
searched the universe to bring you home
because it’s easy to abandon logic
for grief. My father died a year ago
and I’m still writing poems to bring him back
to me—the son of a man from outer space,
the alien child of an earthwoman—nothing
makes complete sense. On television
the phasers are set for stun because there’s
no such thing as death for major characters,
while on Earth, we offer our last goodbye
to the dead just once, and then we say it again
every day for the rest of our lives.
Say goodbye to moving images in mirrors,
in store windows, to the sky at night, to hope
for a glimpse of life out there in the stars.
Maybe my father is hovering outside
the window, hands held up in a weird salute
for a prosperous future because we search
the universe still for our dead, though we know
it’s illogical, though we know we are alone.
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