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.

This article appears in November 30 2015.