Funeral in Vermont
        —James Fitzgerald, watercolor, 19" x 230", 1958

So much hurling snow and the only colors
non-colors. The wind blows
all that snow against the little white church,
the light gray casket snow-covered,
the dark gray pall bearers,
their hats and shoulders weighed down
by snow and sorrow, which is never truly
invisible but white and accumulating fast,
the mourners lined up like tombstones leaning
towards the sanctuary door, their hooded
heads bent against the sleetish,
snow-filled wind, the way this morning
I sit in my living room, alone now,
a book of Fitzgerald's work in my lap,
having arranged and rearranged my half
of the furniture, the wall behind me
empty of the painting it once held,
a vase of faded silk roses on the coffee table,
and through the picture window
everything summery and green.
If only I could close
this book and stop
what's happening from fully happening,
as Fitzgerald has kept the mourners from ever
entering the sanctuary, the dead one
from being lowered into the ground. Snow falls
and falls, white upon white—in the painting
it neither accumulates nor disappears.
But I must go on until pain, anger,
sorrow, regret—whatever this is—
is finished with me.

Tweet
Copyright © 2016 Andrea Hollander All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission