We kiss the person we love last thing before
the coffin is shut
—Jack Gilbert
You lean across the coffin’s gunwale to kiss
your father before the rower launches into
that long, last voyage to purgatory, while we,
survivors, walk and drive onto streets of dailyness,
having forgotten that around some corner
we encounter angels disguised as lilies breathing
light and color enough to lift this meager yard
of earth above itself, and the eyes well-up
with knowing the sad joy of temporal beauty,
of belief that beneath the skin a soul longs
for release from the body’s salt into permanence,
and once more I watch the rosy flesh of your lips
lightly, as if something could break, brush-touch
the blue underflesh of your father’s bloodless
mouth, and then I envision us years hence as I rest
in my coffin and your drawn face inches closer,
closer, lips quivering, this final physicality fading, fading.
