mid-morning funeral
what an unusually cheery day, i think to the cadaver,
it is always most at peace when grief is the centerpiece.
the white rose, the fresh-turned earth,
this late-morning sunlight
is too much grace for this grave.
there is no poetry to be had
in this quiet, and the only song is the rhythm of
shovel against earth,
shovel against earth,
the earth opens itself to us
like another hungry mouth to be fed.
this poetry is a persistent ghost
in the graveyard of my spine,
so i starve myself of all this,
i kneel at the altar of my own words
and pray for grace instead.
i wash today’s morning away in the shower,
scrub the mourning from my fingernails when i come home
before i take your hand in mine again.
there must be a holiness in this ritual.
there is a salvation in your refusal to recoil when i call,
and somehow between all this,
there is a grace that this rain leaves behind.
and this grief makes you kinder if you let it
if you survive it through to the other side
there is more grace than you can imagine.
