heat/changes/everything

I
admiring your surety
when you’re dead you’re dead
i never questioned your choice of burning over burial
that neat formula of pragmatism + heat
removing you from the spiritual mundane
keeping you, a scientist, dead proof 
of chemical kinetics in extremis 
that irreparable change of matter 
yet, my thoughts of late dwell on process 
how incinerating energy transfers to epidermis
how intense heat penetrates brain cells
rendering their synaptic impulse to sap
then on to blacken heart cells  
halting the impetus of unknowable love
all this one-way slack and dissolve of sinew
this flesh giving way under fire
withering, curling, till pale smoke settles
resolved to 22 identifiable elements

II
i try to bring words to what happens
when heat [Q=mc ΔT ] is added to this mix 
but am left with just the plain residue of loss
lone percentages of chemicals and metals
(yes, you knew where the poetry was in those) 
and burning questions like 
where you went when you went 
when the sun restless rose and bled dawn
through your hospice window
and while these percentages 
add up to some whole
they ≠ you

III
toxicity of remains are of concern, i consult learned minds:
one question is do these remains include teeth, fabric, or jewelry?
i replay too many times the opening of the door
the sharpshove of you into the blasted heat
and ask why not the slow decay of decomposition
–fluid and matter making its way to earth’s center 
in blessed renewal–or another rite, perhaps 
embalmed and buried like a norse king
robed in tattered spunsilver, wedding ring intact
found some thousand years later 
yellow teeth cinched in your famous rictus grin
hands folded over your inscrutable stopped heart
i could have laid my head upon your breast and wept, then 
instead, in a combustible casket, mouth agape
the silver amalgams of cheap dental work 
release their poisons in the 1000° heat
stripped of wedding ring and glasses
your hospital-issue gown, a paper cape
catching fire round your shoulders
why, i ask, this radical reduction of you as matter?
why break chemical bonds keeping you as you?
leg bones bound in winding sheets of entropic muscles
your palsied reach of arms when i said my last goodbye
now tiny trace elements pulverized to ash and air 
experts say: you would not dump a ton of it in the river
but otherwise, it would not be a concern

IV
months from now when i take your ashes to water
downriver to the sea where your last coherent words
am i going to falmouth? am i going home?
speak the poetry of a circular return
i will scatter you in nantucket sound
not calculating the percentage of what made you matter 
but trusting the alchemy of the atlantic’s shifting gyres
to add your energy, now elemental, to the planetary fire
you, the lowering skies
you, the waves beating, beating starboard

Phosphate 47.5%

Calcium 25.3%

Sulfate (Sulphate) 11.00%

Potassium 3.69%

Sodium 1.12%

Chloride 1.00%

Silica 0.9%

Aluminum Oxide 0.72%

Magnesium 0.418%

Iron Oxide 0.118%

Zinc 0.0342%

Titanium Oxide 0.0260%

Barium 0.0066%

Antimony 0.0035%

Chromium 0.0018%

Copper 0.0017%

Manganese 0.0013%

Lead 0.0008%

Tin 0.0005%

Vanadium 0.0002%

Beryllium <0.0001%

Mercury <0.00001%