Finding Raymond Carver’s Grave

Justin Edge

I found Port Angeles of strange proportions,

a narrow strip along the Straight

thatched in among the mountains,

with lumber piled in block-long rows

by the wharves, black-hulled cargo ships

in offing, looming misty, motionless,

like anchored conquering galleons.

Turning south up a steep old truck road

my brother, riding with me, says that he

could see how this place would make you

hunt…or drink.

Oceanview

the small sign reads.

Foot off the gas in drive, I always feel

that I’m driving too fast in cemeteries,

as if I shouldn’t be driving at all,

as if it should be harder to get here.

Passing first through the oldest

crumbling stones, we move along, eyeing

a low, black granite point mid-way.

We park, and stand, and read, and stare.

My brother takes a picture.

Tess, Ray’s wife, has a stone set there

with an open ended dash— .

I think of what it must be like to know

where you’ll be laid, before you die.

I notice the markers near around

date to the late seventies and guess

that they picked out the plot when he

was told he only had six months.

He had ten years. “Gravy” is engraved

there between the headstones.

I look to the Straight. I say aloud that

that is Canada, Victoria Island.

And back through the pines I see Port Angeles

some miles off, the picture of warm comfort,

with the mill’s smokestack gently billowing.

The heavy air seems to quiet everything here.

We speak simply and softly till we stop altogether.

Two men in the distance prepare a gravesite.