Funeral Rites

Escort the dead
past their former homes,
stall the weeping
from inside those walls,
set the fallen at peace
with their new plane,
lay them into their holes
and then release all the pain
that has been pent up
to fly and cling to the stones
you set above the dead.

A monument needs those traces
to wrap it
for a monument stripped of memory
is nothing, just another rock
on a pool of earth
that holds something
now quite different from before
and not to be cherished
as anything worth consideration;

the stone and the memory
are where they have left themselves
for you.  What lies below
is returning to the greater whole,
is of no consequence, and in fact

what clings to the stone
will fly off eventually too,
to drift on wind and seep into streams
where it will be taken in by breath and sip
and so infiltrate
the living that still weep
now and then, a little less
now than before, until
what remains in the living

is less than a memory, more a belief
in the past as prelude
to the present, a small token
of the control and presence
that once walked and now flies
away from the pitiful leavings
we will revere for such a thankfully short time:

corpses
that will not hold us for long
as they are.