I attended the funeral of a friend yesterday.
“Too young, too young-- He was just fifty-one.”
buzzed voices like provoked bees,
a stick thrust into the respectful line,
the hive of sorry; the large crowd.
“At what age will I go?”
Hopefully, only a few will attend mine,
many years from now.
A plain room with steel chairs,
a foggy light, a few drooping flowers,
a guest book with a few scrawled names,
a lone fly buzzing the dim.
Because I had lived so long,
most friends had passed,
hardly anyone there.
A woman conducted.
I could see the sad masks
of my aging children.
A strange pleasure rose in me.
I felt grateful to be so alone.
Published in Verse Wrights