Two Stones

1.a
Evening fails to end the day.
Starlight and moonlight stand over me.
In the church, an urn stares at forty people.
The last bee flutters over a flower.
In the cemetery, a casket blindly looks at the tent ceiling.
I can only mix these two days into a moment
when the urn resides within the casket.  At each moment
the preacher says, “. . . bow our heads,”

2.a
and only the motion happens.
I’m looking at the flowers and wandering with my feet
the intention of this day when he says,
“I do,” and I follow. The preacher gives his blessing,
collects his twenty dollars, and two signatures
record the record of the gathering, a gathering
which could come

1.b
from the sorrowfulness.  It is only fitting to bury

ashes with the embalmed.
I can’t help remembering words: “his huge body
splayed over a Lazy Boy; an Arby’s bag below
his left hand on the floor; the television

sounding “Bad Boys” as the coroner
pronounced him dead.”  The last time I saw him

2.b
he limped with a moderate gut and a cane. His disability
locking his mind up into believing
his body couldn’t do, wouldn’t do: too much pain
to deal with; pills lined in the clear
plastic case labeled with days of the week wasted
on swallowing

1.c
pounds of meat for the five years I didn’t see him.
He could have been anything.  A voice troubles me

as I hear the speech like a poem:
“He gave whatever he had to a hand out:

a pauper himself and a spender when he saw a want.”
I never knew this man.  Maybe it was there,

2.c
not in my little girl eyes of 31 years ago when
he took me to be his bride, 32 years ago when I allowed
him to take me, to take me

3.d 
40 years ago for coffee to Sambo’s, where some big-busted
waitress would laugh and giggle, and he would point out,
“She’s my niece.”  I was bait.  The seal slides down

as I stand at a distance with my toes facing another stone.