Funerals

There was the one we planned in the parking                    Lot, gearshift forgot          In neutral, motor overhot, stunned sunset

Blinding off the diagnostic complex.                    The one from behind          The radiation lead, his hand

Snuck out to my protected plastic chair                    Listing finger          To finger his favorite hymns.

The one in the dim drip of the chemo                    Ward, the onco          Nurses shushing our too-raucous

List of uninvites. The heavy art                    Of giving grief          Some wieldy order finds relief

In much revising, its gravity leavened                    To a new genre.          Even grief itself softens,

Unbarbing as each black dress falls out                    Of fashion,          As each floral spray's carnations

Brown and curl, as every evening adds                    Its soft amen          To this protracted requiem.

But in all the breviaries, in the dirges,                    In the obituary pages          And the eulogies of strangers,

There is no form for what I have become,                    Half-widowèd          So long before my widowhead:

Unhusbanded. Unfutured. Uncondoled.                    Under the dull          Hospital fluorescence a pall

Settles, tender and indiscriminate;                    Into its keeping          I my everything commit.