On Watching My Father Carry His Mother’s Coffin

The wind whips soundlessly and carries 

a scent of wet earth and dirt 

as though the land, too, is lamenting.  

Yesterday he trembled at the kitchen table, 

for she is even in the sunflowers, 

and then he sobbed in my weedy arms.  

I am an orphan now, 

he told me. But Jesus is near  

to the orphans 

and the widows.  

The day after the funeral would have been her birthday  

and I show him a picture of himself at the  

cemetery.  

I look so old, he whispers, 

and life passes, silent as a cloud,  

while I have never seen him look more beautiful.