Funeral

for my brother Manfred in his grief, after his young friend of twelve years, George Lin, passed away in a tragic accident.

I. 

Grief you never do
is never done with you.
And so, we buy the lilies.
And so, we do the funeral.
We do the art of losing.

II.

Death is a part of living,
they say.  Well
today I saw death living
in the creases of skin
young men wore crying.

Deep sobs,
from places within they
didn’t know existed.

  It was midday when
we gathered in the sun,
too warm for the coldness
of what lay before us.

A teacher, he was,
of numbers and figures.
He left one equation
unsolved.

III.

And as the dirt piled on
and the paperbark swayed,
I watched a leaf lower
itself by the hand of the wind.

He’s with us, I thought.
Nature carries him to us –
our voices, our sobs
summon his stories
from the earth, the
soil so fresh, it stirs him.

Beneath the lily petals
that brush our hands,
he rests, far too early,
too soon asleep.

IV.

Mercy did not save him, and
fate? She did not spare him.
With all our might
we love him.

Hoping, in our collective suffering
that love is enough.