No one I know
has ever given a grave
as a Christmas present.
I assume you wear scrubs
and turned your car’s engine off
before the hospital.
I invented this coring machine
that extracts holes
for placing the dead standing up.
I imagine you singing
in the surgical theater
hands moving like a pianist.
Property has become so expensive
there are no new cemeteries
and the old ones are three deep.
copyright © 2022 Kenneth P. Gurney
After Paul’s dog
was put down
when her kidneys failed
he dug a hole
and filled it with
the canine body
and on top
he placed a sapling.
This grave event
required a starry
darkness to open
a small door
in Paul’s brain
for technicolor memories
to turn sepia
through acceptance
and letting go
of grief.
copyright © 2022 Kenneth P. Gurney
I understand now.
I am slow. It took me some time.
Only the living change clothes
and addresses.
Oh! That explains why burial crypts
have many drawers—
none filled with shirts
or undergarments.
Last week I looked at your headstone
and wondered why
with all our technology
the stone is not shaped like your head.
I placed a Brooks Brothers catalogue
in your grave before the dirt covered you.
copyright © 2022 Kenneth P. Gurney
postscript
This poem is about a father—not my father.
A wake scheduled
for four-thirty in the morning
revels the scrape and rub
of knees and elbows
and the first lightning
of an approaching monsoon,
whose thunderclap
must be imagined
as six syllables
impacting the breastbone.
The gathered
form an imperfect circle
around a long time friend
who conjured the notion
that his ashes
be mixed
into the sandy ground
at first light.
The approaching storm
whips up such a violence
as we stir him
into the arroyo’s bank,
knowing the coming
flash flood
will strip him clean away.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
Umflop 