THE FUNERAL

a funeral it was

the dead laid out, stiff, unmoving
--goodbye, Love, goodbye--
the mourner resisting somehow
the impulse to throw her body
onto the coffin as it was lowered
into the cold ground

staring long hours at the 
covered-over hole,
ugly with dug dirt,
a few wilting flowers 
sad in their urn,
nothing else to mark where
there once was heat and light

then the post-mortem:
the review of memories,
flashes of rage, bitterness,
disappointment, disillusion,
humiliation cold and deep,
grief, lingering sadness

but one morning,
lying in her lonely bed,
she heard it clearly:

life was calling

5/3/99