Carrying Kevin to the Grave by Dick Westheimer

Carrying Kevin to the Grave

I told Kevin that we’re all moving
at the speed of light in space-time.

He replied that I was likely right
but that wouldn’t help me haul

the Gravely sickle bar attachment
out into the tractor yard. I’d asked him

for help. What would help, he said
was if I just decided I could do it.

You’re strong as I am. You just think
too much. And he’s right,

it was like all of time dilated
into that one year he lived here.

We built a barn, dug the foundation
for our house in 100° heat, quit smoking dope,

started again, listened to a shit-ton
of Grateful Dead and I learned

to play the guitar. And he just up and left,
headed out west—to work sales

for his brother’s natural hairbrush
business. I didn’t hear from him

till the late-night calls began. He’d ring
at 3AM. Deb and I slept on a pull out

couch and that first call woke the baby
and Kevin harangued about me owing him

big money for all the work he did
and that his brother’s business wasn’t

worth a damn and later I heard from his sister
that he started using smack and they found

his body in a ditch halfway up Cone Peak
off Route 22S and he’d be seventy now,

helping me out and teaching me
how to carry things too heavy to hold.

*

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in ONLY POEMS, Whale Road Review, Rattle, Abandon Journal, ONE ART and Vox Populi. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at dickwestheimer.com