The Funeral

forty-five years on, and the memory blows back through my skull like smoke from the tailpipe of some old banged-up car, that hazy day rushing back in, the cool breeze pushing cherry blossoms around like pink confetti in a mad parade. petals swirl down on us in the churchyard, everything soft and sad and already gone.

and then the Catholic incense finds my nostrils, and one thin grey ghost curls up from the dead wick of a candle, the little ember coughing its last, the party for the departed now at an end.

and the stained glass throws red-yellow knives of light across the marble, so shiny you could see your own broken heart in it, and the bell starts tolling slow like it’s dragging its feet through molasses, tolling for him, and for me, and for all of us.

and there he is in the box, my father in a cheap black suit, hair slicked back for once. a poet, mountaineer, and a taxi driver. lily pollen smeared orange on his cuffs like he’d been rolling in some springtime whorehouse. his talents and vices all laid out equal now, the hard booze, the cheap women, the days drunk while my mother pulled double shifts. I lean down and kiss the cold cheek, stubble-rough, and whisper goodbye to a good man with a soul cracked wide open like a highway at dawn.

and the blossoms keep falling, they just keep falling.

a rosary clenched,
praying him up to heaven,
still angry at him.