Meditações - the home’s clock, broke like a bone, always read three

 

The Mission

Back there then I lived

         across the street from a home

 

for funerals—afternoons

         I’d look out the shades

 

& think of the graveyard

         behind Emily Dickinson’s house—

 

how death was no

         concept, but soul

 

after soul she watched pour

         into the cold

 

New England ground.

         Maybe it was the sun

 

of the Mission,

         maybe just being

 

more young, but it was less

         disquiet than comfort

 

days the street filled with cars

         for a wake—

 

children played tag

         out front, while the bodies

 

snuck in the back. The only hint

         of death those clusters

 

of cars, lights low

         as talk, idling dark

 

as the secondhand suits

         that fathers, or sons

 

now orphans, had rescued

         out of closets, praying

 

they still fit. Most did. Most

         laughed despite

 

themselves, shook

         hands & grew hungry

 

out of habit, evening

         coming on, again—

 

the home’s clock, broke

         like a bone, always

 

read three. Mornings or dead

         of night, I wondered

 

who slept there & wrote letters

         I later forgot

 

I sent my father, now find buoyed up

         among the untidy

 

tide of his belongings.

         He kept everything

 

but alive. I have come to know

         sorrow’s

 

not noun

         but verb, something

 

that, unlike living,

         by doing right

 

you do less of. The sun

         is too bright.

 

Your eyes

         adjust, become

 

like the night. Hands

         covering the face—

 

its numbers dark

         & unmoving, unlike

 

the cars that fill & start

         to edge out, quiet

 

cortège, crawling, half dim, till

         I could not see to see—

Kevin Young