82-All Out

We bade farewell to a man today.
He, in a sea grass box that will burn well,
us doleful and dressed to the nines,
unsure of etiquette, embarrassed,
surreptitiously seeking out old faces long unseen.

His children, in their forties, dutifully calm
try hard to grow up in thirty minutes.
A witty cricket poem that deserved a clap
but no one dared,
the worried looking funeral DJ
tasked to manage the three chosen tunes,
the pause before Glenn Miller a tad too long.

Fine words, done and dusted
and the rosemary sprigs are sniffed,
then gently laid upon the dead man’s chest,
his freshly minted widow sobs,
flushed and flustered in her grief,
a broken husk, hunched in her pew
obliged to greet us one by one
our condolences cutting welts
like forty lashes of the cat.

Then to our man’s favourite pub
a sausage roll, samosas, chips,
such curious grub.
Old men stare, glazed and ponderous into space
to wonder where the short straw will flutter next.



© Graham Sherwood 6/2014