Small narrow stores, dusty floors, slamming screen doors.
Barrels of ware twenty years sitting.
Who needs new fangled gadgets?

Blistering Kansas sun, milky sky and crops.
Oasis appearing, roadside stand.
Can I have an ice cream pleaseee?

You gave me my first bike, taught me to ride it.
Oh, I could see through your Santa beard.
We parted, for I grew big.

The sky was blue the day my grandfather died.
Old folks shuffle by the carcass dear.
He looks just like he's sleeping.

Standing, hands in my pockets, bump on a log.
Strangers talk about him, laugh and eat.
There's his grandson at the door.

Don't they know we built a kite that wouldn't fly?
Why, we went fishing at Swope Park lake.
Have they never caught frogs there?

Out goes the coffin with Odd Fellow brothers.
Grandma in black, small, alone, in the lead car,
Under cumulous and nimbus.

Five cars back, busy with teenage confusions,
I look at the autumn sky for tornadoes.
One almost got grandpa once.

Preacher stands, Bible in hand, before the hole.
The sky turns gray in contemplation.
Mourners shift uneasily.

Slowly at first, then relentlessly, rain falls.
Glum wet people wanting it over.
Grandpa, watch me splash water.

It's a beautiful day for a funeral,
The preacher declaims with beaming smile,
When a man meets his maker.

Few believe - these martyrs, quaking in the rain.
They rush to cars - see you at the wake.
Did they know you, grandfather?

You'd think it was rain that got me down sometimes.
No, for that, I sought the gloom before.
Could rain bring release, like tears?

A student looks out a fifth story window.
Through mist, in Cleveland, he sees below
A funeral procession.

Cars snake slowly through God's acre to the hole.
Eyes follow the coffin dropping down.
Some suffer out there in March.

Look up, my poor fools, grandfather shuns the hole.
He flits among the drops, in and out,
Playing with succulent beams.

He looked down a long time ago to see
Friends in the pale, yearning to be free.
Thus, he went, smiling at me.

Lawrence Wiley
Copyright (c) 1998-2009