First Day of Work

1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete, 827,060 tons of toxic embalming fluid, 90,000 tons of steel (from caskets), and 30 million tons of hardwood board each year are buried in the United States.


Beverly made last night’s meatloaf for lunch and I brought home flowers.
We eat at the small table beneath the kitchen television,
I can see myself in the linoleum.
The remote control buttons all stick with age,
Batteries changed maybe three times since the late eighties
So I sit up, stretch, to raise the volume.
She glows like she did the day I met her as the refrigerator hums behind us.
The time on the microwave
Is faster than the clock on the stove and my watch has stopped altogether.
Her bright crimson lipstick collects bits of food like a neon flytrap.
She asks how my first day out of retirement went.
I’m too tired to talk, bow at my plate, push food aimlessly with my knife, nod, sigh and say,
You know, it went.

Either it was Walter or Wallace; I couldn’t seem to read my own writing.
It took six of us to lift him in his coffin and fill the hearse.
If we were younger four would have been enough.
Our bones creaked beneath the weight of the deceased
I felt no less significant as I did beneath the burden of a two-man bazooka
Korea bound beside an army of Sherman’s.
Legends upon legends surrendered to the generations we fashioned after ourselves.
I’ll bury mine and they’ll bury theirs.

The hearse handled well, soft casket interior.
Although he is more cargo than passenger I’ll say it anyway,
My passenger made a better backseat driver than my wife.
I drove toward the dull yoke sun out from behind the funeral home.
The owner of the establishment, my boss, a wiry middle-aged man,
Younger than my son, swam in a badly fit business suit and told me earlier while on the Grand tour
Through the ceremonial loading dock
That it was an old plantation estate.
On the front porch, I saw myself ages ago asking Bev’s father for her hand in marriage, before the war.
He said no, because I rode fast bikes through town,
Racing over mounds of dirt that would become the Brooklyn Bridge.
When I came back alive we married.

I looked back at Walter in the rear view;
He’s but a giant husk of oak, with a nice clear finish.
We buried a young guy this morning with his cell phone in a walnut stain on pine.
A girl yesterday I hear took down with her a music player.
Beverly and I opted for a mausoleum, inexpensive at knee level.

The cemetery stretched beyond measure
Highways upon highways of lonely stone stamped and dated.
An address for the abandoned.
Pray the kids can afford to keep the crematorium lit,
So they may all spread themselves, once the earth is less land than grave,
After the last gravedigger pours himself into one final plot, like musical chairs.

Family and friends lowered Walter slowly.
I stood as tall as I could beside another fresh grave.
While our heads hung in respect, I found a few white roses lying
On the over-turned dirt,
I kneeled down, used the carved stone as a balance,
Then behind my back pushed them up my sleeve.

I drove home for lunch; the hearse’s shadow fills the driveway.
What food I don’t finish she’s packed for lunch tomorrow.
Slip my shoes back on as Beverly fills the vase.
By the time they brown, I’ll borrow more.