Some Funerals

By my count

and odd bits of memory

I have been

to thirteen funerals

in sixty odd years,

only missing two

I was expected at

neither one was mine

and neither do I regret.

Some folks I went to see

to make sure they were dead

and the ones I didn’t

were too close to let them go

I remember being seven

on a hot Mississippi Sunday

buying a coke for a dime

from a vending machine

and mama saying it was

alright to buy on Sunday

‘cause it was grandpa’s funeral

And I said well nobody had to work

today to fill the machine.

But somehow that didn’t matter

if it wasn’t a funeral

we couldn’t drop

the dime in the slot

it was hot and I was

wearing a stiff black suit

so I was glad to be able to sin

on account of my dead grandpa

and I cried when mama

sang “Rock of Ages”

and fifty years later when

my eleven year old

played “Ode to Joy”

at my mother’s funeral.

The last funeral

I traded the stiff suit

for a polo and khakis

and the coke

for a tumbler

of rum and diet

and it was no better

and after the last one

I did not attend

my brother and I

carried the ashes

of mom and dad

to the old Union Line

to be buried in a shallow grave

in front of his parents.

I was sad to see

that even though

 it is in the heart

of Newt Knight’s

Free State of Jones,

it is both all white

and has a section

dedicated to Confederate Soldiers,

rebel flags and all

So, to steal from Tanya Tucker

when I die, I may not go to heaven

but don’t bury me

in the Union Line.