Sweet Summer

 I am alive.

I spin and jive.

Honeycomb and bees

come from a hive.

Get to the water and

take a dive.

A cold shower is

sure to revive.

Give yourself a

big high-five.

Trees sigh and

apple peels fly,

fruit and knife

pare. Pie thrives.

Peace and Mourning

 

Frosty lace covers the tree branches, the bushes, the shepherd’s hook in my dormant garden where a few leaves poke up from dirty snow. Now as thin as onion skin, not much more than an intricate weaving of vein, they provide little cover for the perennials tucked beneath.

The ground beneath the snow at Gates of Heaven is diamond-hard this time of year. It took jackhammers and a backhoe hours of pounding and slashing to leave the rectangle that would receive your coffin. The family didn’t want to wait for the spring thaw. You had to be buried right away.

After the church service, we formed a line around the hole and sang as you were lowered in. Some stepped forward to drop tentative flowers on the glossy wood before the first ceremonial handful of dirt was sprinkled down. We didn’t witness the piled dirt return to its resting place. That would be done later.

We were ushered back to our cars and the funeral lunch. Aproned parishioners waited on us with abstract solicitousness. I chatted with friends, dry-eyed.

Finally, in the car, alone with a peace lily someone insisted I keep, I wept for you, for me, and for all that was lost.