January 24, 2025Carrying Paul
We were instructed in how to carry the casket.
I was one of the three on the left, the one at the back.
On my shoulder sat my one-sixth of the weight
of Paul’s heavy brass-handled, mahogany casket,
my right hand palm up, pressed flat on the bottom.
We were told to cup our free hands on the shoulder
of the man just ahead, and to walk in step, left-right,
left-right. Paul would have said we looked vaguely
Egyptian, although not with their dusty clay colors,
for this frieze was all varnish and flowers, us six
in navy and black.
We knew without being told
to carry the casket from the hearse to the green tent
over uneven ground, stepping across other graves,
and our stumbles made Paul lift, tilt and fall
on our shoulders as if in a boat on a rolling sea,
sinking a little, then rising again, the six of us
overboard, clinging onto the casket, with Paul
spanking our hands with an oar, for that was
just like him, keeping it up until he’d been beached
on the canvas webbing stretched over the grave.
I felt weightless at once, my best shoes scarcely
touching the Astroturf carpet, as if I could lift off
and fly over once, then bank away into the sun,
but I was held there by the weight of Paul’s family,
his widowed mother, a sister, a brother, seated
on steel folding chairs on the edge of his part
of the next world, as the earth’s odor welled up
and over, and lapped at their ankles, then mine.
from #86 – Winter 2024