I’d send you out of this world into
the gallery of night in jujube
wood, sycamore and cedar like a pharaoh
in a solar boat, but it was broad daylight
as you embarked in your coffin, plain pine,
marked simply with the star of David.
On that breezy, unseasonably hot vernal
equinox, we watched your being lowered
into the grave. How the coffin rocked!
“Traveling,” Fransella, your Jamaican
caretaker, telephoned when your death rattle
finally came. You, who never wanted
to go anywhere, I thought of you gone,
Mother, striding through the seven gates of
exit and ten pylons of entrance— Why did you
leave us locked out of your heart, the heart
of the underworld, the reign of secret things?
At the crossroads diner, Death’s Diner, we called
it, I watched my brother, a psychiatrist, search
for bits of news to tell us who you are, were?
(Confused, I thought it too soon to turn you
into an artifact.) He, we, wanted to hear
something other than your life affair with food.
Wondering what fills your insistent mouth now,
whom do you ask “is it good?” We are like
the newly hatched cardinals outside my window,
mouths open, frantic to be fed.
