Elegy

Everything draws attention to her

here where she reclines with hands crossed

framed by an open casket that in turn is

flanked by pedestals holding flower arrangements

with her grieving daughters in a line at its foot.

She has joined her older sisters now,

my mother and godmother,

where time and the world have no writ.

Hers is now the beauty of innuendo:

the beauty that lives only in memory

after the song has ended.

But the living gathered here are incorrigible.

They go on living as long as they can.

They talk, plan and even joke quietly 

while she lies nearby, deaf now to

their insistent song of life.

Along a wall, on tables and on easels,

are the images from her life: husband, mother,

children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins, 

reminders of religion, emblems of heritage.

One, striking in black and white, features her alone

with tousled hair and attitude - a film noir sylph.

Predictably, my mind turns to a picture that isn't here.

In it the three sisters, young women tightly grouped,

are dressed in their Sunday best. Their loving gazes

focused down on the baby my mother holds there at

the center in a moment finally now beyond recall.