What happens to the dead

What happens to the dead
and those who've died out of our lives -
ex-lovers, old teachers, neighbors who've moved,
friends we drop and don't see again?

Perhaps they hang around the margins of our vision
as bright or dark spots in the corners of our eyes.
Perhaps they become Bobble Head dolls
in the backs of cars that drive behind us
or supporting characters in movies we never watch,
listings in phone books on pages we don't turn to,
members of studio audiences of late-night talk shows,
laughing invisible but familiar in the dark.

Maybe they're bugs under rocks we walk past,
happier than we imagine they'd be.
They might be starfish drifting beneath waves,
quietly shifting on ocean floors,
or sea horses, or clouds of brine shrimp or plankton,
in tranquil communion with all those others,
all my dead and yours.