The Funeral Home

THE FUNERAL HOME

   In the environs of the funeral home
   The smell of death was absent. All there was
   Was flowers rioting, the odors blown
   Palpable as a blossom into the face,
   To be crushed, to overpower--as if the grass
   Already covered the nostrils in that place.

   Hyacinths, larkspur, irises, flags of summer
   Freshening and quickening in the little
   Dawn breeze, and opening to a bee's clamor
   The delicate parts, just now fragrantly ready,
   And now beginning to die, the damp petal
   Swaying a little with the weight of the bee's body--

   Let them cut these flowers. Let them be ruddy
   And sunlit gold and white and let them be
   Heaped up and overflowing over the body
   Waiting to be put down. To be unborn.
   Something is sprouting in dark mahogany
   Out of them--edged, and shining like a thorn.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning