Springvale: a Visit
You drive an age
beyond all landmarks
then start to feel
you're almost there.
Sure enough, discreet signs
point you off the highway
into what no longer calls itself
The Necropolis.
'Botanical Cemetery',
please, as if plants
are buried here.
No, countless roses bloom
everywhere this week,
and signs encourage us
towards magnolia gardens,
fuchsia - on and on.
We know which chapel, glimpse
the family whose mourning
we're here to join,
all except their old man.
His framed portrait
fronts us in our pews.
Mild, upright citizen
capable of sternness.
A long, active life
of service and family,
work, pleasure, travel,
home. Blessed, mostly.
The widow, married sixty
good years, now frail,
leaning on frame and
daughters, stoical.
The son's eulogy mixes
the earnest and the humorous.
The deaconess tells of the best
of parishioners and councillors.
The Lord is our Shepherd.
Prayer. Amen. She has to reach up
to scatter on the high coffin
symbolic Ashes to Ashes.
The family leads us out.
Pallbearers not required.
A whirring near the coffin
signals it's sinking.
Nothing to be done
but walk to the tearoom
past blossoms, flowering
shrubs and trees, water.
The old man's portrait
has come too, benign
as we take refreshment
and ask after each other.
Another time look for
'The Garden of No Distant Place'.
The first exit gate is locked.
The second obliges.
The drive home seems quicker
than the previous one
from the familiar
to the distantly remote.
|