Funeral Spring

Two aunts died, in different boroughs,
Within two months of a rainy year.

Summoned up from Washington,
We traversed the Eastern Seaboard’s spine,

A strong vertical, holding together
Cities that might rather slide

Into a blighted rest. In Orange,
West or South, one of the landing lights

For the mass of suburbia
Hurtling towards New York,

A shaggy carpet of marble crosses
Hunched inside a chainlink fence

On both sides of the turnpike.
The second trip up, I made goggles

From my cupped hands, and pressed my eyes
Straight ahead, against the side window:

Before long, the cemetery came and went,
Flickering by fast. It could have been snowfall,

If all you knew of snow were hand-held
Plastic bubbles, each enclosing a monument

Forever drowning, forever besieged
By an agile blizzard of square-cut flakes.

1990

Even Josh Knows