Posted in Death

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Posted on by tq1695

The timing couldn’t have been worse.
A stopover one time zone west
three hours of a 27 hour flight
not returning, is not sufficiently difficult
no complexity of visa, schedule or expense.
The funeral director is not impatient
Wednesday is suitable. Today is Sunday.

In church the numbers are gratifying.
Expectation and dread
probability knew a crowd unlikely
cringe prepared for echoes of space.

After the last hymn and burial
memories bubble in flat sunshine.
Funeral imbibition
last stand for sexism’s etiquette
men drink beer and whisky
women tea and coffee.

Later when guests are no longer
the inheritors of this earth
walk around house and farm.
Just as fleshy becomes flab then fat
what was routine
slows to effort
labouring to impossible.

The makings of strain.
Little things that were once
done too soon and too often
are still waiting.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
For the back story click Backstage
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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.