A friend’s funeral

A veil of unknowing across the land
humbled are we by death’s finality
we say our simple prayers
for help from a silent God
we say lives in our hearts
we are but crumbs
beneath His table
unfit for dogs
a lifetime
of hard
work
and
sacrifice
in a twinkling
gone, again I look
for the spirit’s rise but
see nothing, feel nothing
know nothing while we wrap
ourselves in prayers and talk about
heaven and second comings and resurrection
I would settle for a trance, to be in the play fields
of those spirits of my youth when it took no blade to
separate us from the quick and the dead and the flesh
we were all there shape shifting and happily floating lighter
than air and free as the warm breezes of spring when bees
are on the wing and birds raise their voices in the song of eternity
have you forgotten me dear anima locked away where my doubts
cannot pry you loose, the white casket crowned by flowers and a brass
crucifix of Christ in the hands of a simple trisomic child in whom we place
our trust to lead us through the darkness of a life of suffering and ignorance