on todt hill road

We are six: two singing off key,
four silent. It isn't Amazing Grace.
I don't know this hymn, or even
the minister's name; the woman
from the funeral home knows both.

There will be no photograph today.
My parents are quiet. My sister
is trying not to laugh. I look away,
notice a house with a doorway
shaped like the number six.
I haven't been beside this road
in that many years, or is it seven?
I don't know exactly; but then,
I wasn't following this grave.

Today will be a footnote:
Helen was buried at Moravian.
It won't say a black car is a hole,
or that a hole is absent dirt.

I should know this hymn. I want
to remember a song that shovels
dirt and granite, but I won't
because this is what counts:

she's quiet in her box,
the hint of flowers -

white - above her

This poem appears in MiPo, January 2004.
Listen to this poem.