Another funeral
Another damn funeral.A family friend. A neighbor. A community member. A mother, daughter, grandmother, sister, wife. Whatever label you use, she was too damn young to drop dead – literally dead, before her body hit the floor of her kitchen – at 55. Her 56th birthday would have been today. Instead of a birthday party – a funeral.
On the back of the funeral program was this poem (and I can't get Blogger to format the spacing properly - sorry):
If Death Were A Woman
I’d want her to come for me smelling of cinnamon
wearing bright cotton purple maybe hot pink
a red bandanna in her hair She’d bring
good coffee papaya juice bouquet of sea grass
Saltine crackers and a lottery ticket We’d dip
our fingers into moist pouches of lady’s slippers
crouch down to see how cabbages feel when wind
bumps against them in the garden We’d walk
through Martins’ woods find the old house
its crumbling foundation strung with honeysuckle vines
and in the front yard a surprise jonquils
turning the air yellow glistening and ripe
still blooming for a gardener long gone
We’d head for the beach wearing strings of shells
around our left ankles laugh at their ticking
sounds the measured beat that comes with dancing
on hard-packed sand the applause of ocean and gulls
She’d play ocarina songs to a moon almost full
and I’d sing off-key We’d glide and swoop
become confetti of leaf fall all wings
floating on small whirlwinds never once dreading
the heart-silenced drop And when it was time
she would not bathe me Instead we’d scrub the porch
pour leftover water on flowers stand a long time
in sun and silence then holding hands
we’d pose for pictures in the last light
Ellen Kort
from "I am Becoming the Woman I've Wanted"
1 Comments:
That's a lyrical version of Erma Bombeck's poem about what she'd do if she'd known what she knows now.
Lovely.
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