Who loads these offerings
by roadside death spots?
Not relatives surely; friends,
you assume, who have already
placed flowers on the coffin, in
chapel, at graveside or urn wall.
But such bouquets fall mourn-short.
A soul interrupted en route seems now
to require temporal marking. See those
propped white crosses tilting, golden
framed pictures catching the sun's glint,
printed pages flapping in car-breeze,
oversized stuffed toys nuzzling CDs,
in loose piles, footy scarves, trophies.
Emblems continue to accumulate
at the site of last breath, of sudden
rupture. There's a reaching in these
jumbled cairns. Institutions can't cut it.
Even when colours fade, animals
desecrate, the vacuum remains.
Not just the absence of the departed,
but some gapingness the dead
leave in all of the rest of us,
for whom the road winds on.
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