After the Funeral

After the Funeral

You have had enough flowers
for one day,
daffodils and roses
wild blue lupine and queen anne’s lace.
You have made enough attempts to imagine open meadows
where you lie undisturbed
breathing aromas foreign and divine.
Their bodies are gone.
The night has come.
The back yard calls you
to its shadows,
moonlight dancing with windblown branches:
a slow waltz, perhaps a fox trot,
and you see them both
(before they ever conceived of you,
before they got lost in the stop-time
of abandonment and pain).
They are moving as one, cheek touching cheek,
stockinged feet sliding slowly across another time,
breathing in
the whole
of each other.
Now you cross their rotting deck,
step down into un-mown grass
and let your bare toes drink in the recent rain.
You pull its sweet essence into your veins
and remember that everything will change.