It Came to Me This Morning…

This morning I pulled out a poetry book I hadn’t looked at in a while, looking for inspiration. These sunless days are difficult.

I found inspiration, but not the kind I expected. In the back of the poetry book was the agenda for my father’s funeral service with copies of the two poems I read. I succumbed to some tears and wrote this in one fell swoop, like a stream of consciousness:

In the back of the poetry book

I found

the order of service

for the day we buried my father

encased in the poems I read –

Not mine –

they said what I couldn’t say

and still can’t.

Why are my words

buried in this living coffin?

Where are the magic words

that could change everything?

Dead to a deaf world

they have no choice but to lie there

forever;

If only they could rest somewhere and find

the promised peace,

be stretched out on a page

caressed by so many waking eyes,

absorbed into regretful hearts

as the important last glimpse

before eternal silence.

We found a poem of my father’s,

his mind preparing for death;

We placed it over his smiling face

like a veil,

framed it like the precious voice

from the grave it was —

miracle of life after death –

Why didn’t we see this before,

everyone said?

If my father were alive,

he would probably say the same.