skateboarding to the funeral

another sudden death
they seem to come in waves

squat battered hearse athwart
cobblestones
blocks access to
the Presbyterian church

Calvinists! with their high pulpits
hierarchical pews on pews
but the Mennonites cluster
bereaved
huddle as if in their own
humble rented building

tall mortician's assistant
long and gangly, still young
but with remarkable shock of
preternaturally white hair
a shocked look, as if he just
got off the boat from Ireland
fleeing a potato famine

service replete with Irish motifs
flute, harp, drum
was "Danny Boy" ere sung so sweet,
so plaintively?
with Celtic poems the High God
High Ancestors, Druidic shades

the Mennonites come to church
on bicycles, on foot, on horseback
skateboarding to the funeral
I encounter the pianist
fleeing the service
she hugs me tho I hardly know her

we shed tears together on Baltimore Avenue,
the cracked, misshapen cobblestones
jacarandas spring up
in the frost of early February

the crashing bore

you listen in stunned
and silent amazement
to the crashing bore
narrate every twist and turn
of his insignificant life
in a flat and uninflected
monotone using perfectly
constructed and grammatical
sentences which register
an impressive 97 on the
Flesch Kincaid readability
scale

in swimming

in swimming this morning
I observe my body evolve

left brain to right flipper
right brain -- transmit!
slogging through primeval
sea syrup
now again left brain

is this how it goes?

clumsy reptile
plodding through oceans

now amphibian
sun gleams on my
barnacled carapace
and I fly

brain transmit again
stroke stroke
winged horse ascends
in stratosphere
over holy mountains