Those few hours after death
Death Fire
I would burn him,
it was our tradition.
"Any metal in the body?"
I checked, "Yes."
"Any mechanical devices?"
I understood and checked,
"Yes."
This is what it had come to,
the checking off of boxes.
"Will you require an urn?"
I checked, "No."
He'd come back to me
in a plastic bag
with a tag and
packed in a FedEx box.
It was OK.
I wasn't keeping them, the ashes.
That seemed creepy
to me
And he wouldn't have
wanted it.
I was dreaming of a
funeral pyre, with
emotional people, wails
of silence and
streams of tears
And wind to blow the ashes
to the four corners of this
world.
I smiled weakly at the
polite man with the forms
in the living room.
They would take care of it all.
I thanked the two men
who'd know my father
in another life time and place,
as they carried him away.