Knight-Errant

    A well-thumbed book
    like a well-thumbed life,
    "whilst you walk this earth"
    yet nothing is "afoot",
    as so many small boys
    throwing stones through the funeral parlour
    glass door.

    A cake-walk? Being alive and interacting
    across the face of the multitude is terrible
    algebra running into unfathomable sums.
    "Doing your sums", my grade school teacher
    used to say and I still am. Whippersnapper,
    learning lessons in a strange stamina
    sort of way.

    One of the multitude died last night &
    is now "resting" in a large, Victorian parlour.
    Even the walls grimace. I went by, caught a peek
    at the assemblage chasing thru rain to see his
    last hurrah. Look, "parlour" can be deadly serious
    even if ice-cream and pizza attach dead-pan humour
    to the term. Imagine, picking the last day of the
    month to go packing. Finale.

    "Going down to the sea in ships". Death as voyage escaping
    prison confines of the harbour. Cliches donate dim glimpses
    into the apparent.
    One sees a lot by the moon.
    Crisp, fall air and
    leaves yellowing
    frightened from their wits
    to end their brief, balloon walk. Such
    faraway faces of Eve and a boat
    moored to a dock.

    Crossing streets -
    a gray, fusillade church,
    knight-errant, breaks the night.
    Trees chuckle in coves through wispy clouds.
    Madonna's face in a shawl only it's not on the
    stained glass window I see her. She seems
    to be pouting. Ashamed of what we have to go through
    at the end of this filth and stupidity? Restrictions?
    Death lifts them in one heave of the casket. More illuminating
    are the mourners. Dashing thru the sleet in brief poignancy;
    shrill, old voices that knew the deceased reciting
    what can only be the obvious. Leaden eyes that cast no shadow.

    Hardly analogous to being "called home" or "going to their
    reward".
    More light is cast by the street lamp, the pale glow of fireflies
    and neon signs winking-drinking waves like the fisherman's
    cork.

    This place is holy to me. A shrine. Night air with mist
    collecting,
    watching flames shuffle over hearth-stones; leaves mount a
    glade.

    The bitterest berry, flower to lily of the valley. A heart that
    makes gravelly noise. Tiny angel spread of petals, no black
    funeral vestments for me.

    Standing close to the clock and thinking.
    A luxury bought with time,
    in every evening weeping in the corner.