Funeral Being

Matt Haller

When you are dying of thirst, when you are just seconds away, you still have enough water to cry.  Still enough hidden somewhere for a tear.  I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s what they say.  I don’t know why, but it’s kind of romantic in a way.  What a way to die.

I arrived only yesterday.

I missed the funeral,

But I was not late.

At night I poured you a drink;

You always did prefer the rain

To prettier things.

We talked it out,

Though it was difficult

With all that weight.

200 cubic pounds

To be precise.

And I?  I tried to be nice.

I did not cry.

You were once beer-breath story teller to westward setting suns.

Later you were rock and grain.

You were once sad and alone, arriving too soon or too late.

You are now cold, arid lessons in geography.

You were once snakes and wasps and jagged things.

Tomorrow you might be leaves.

You are all these, and I am your genes.

Funny how we become what we once thought was insane.

Death has no logic:

Go farther father, go

To your Awful Aviary.

Captain coldest,

You are not scary;

Some say the Queen of Dairy is a canary.

Yet, what have we here?

Why, it is a flower

With an edible root

And a man buried underneath.