a new poem

I wish that someone would take
photos at funerals, someone
professional who knows what not
to miss and not to capture.

Maybe we should all be clicking
and flashing away as at a wedding.
The moment slips from memory
as moments always do, and I’m left
with vital colors lost.

The colors of caskets fade, the stands
of carnation and lily, and the hearse.
I remember only bronze in kind
sunlight, the green lawn stretching
to a rusty wall, gray stones.

I remember the motion of leaves
but not the depth of green shade
cast by an awning on the catafalque
and mounded earth.

If I had pictures I could see that you
were there with us: bright shirt, black
tie and the dull blue of sky that framed
your head. And the dead already resting,
hardly even listening anymore.

It is a kind of wedding, isn’t it?
A putting away of childish things,
a new tribe and loyalty, a faith to be kept forever.
And then, maybe there’s dancing.

 
Shutters by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed
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