Graveside Service
I like a graveside service,
freshly-dug hole,
casket suspended above.
It’s a point of focus,
everyone in their dress clothes
ringed around it, heads bowed
as if asking something of the earth.
The workers who dug the hole
and will shortly fill it
are across the grounds,
a respectful distance,
leaning against a rusting pickup,
talking quietly and smoking.
They’ve learned to blend
into the landscape of headstones and oaks.
When I drove past a service
out at East Lawn, I could see
a small gathering: a hearse, a minister,
and further out, at the edge of the property,
a tractor, its bucket full of dark earth.
I thought about the fog of grief
settling over a family, heavy,
persistent, and how an ordinary
tree remains an ordinary tree.
When the time comes, hold my funeral
in a shady grove, a riverside cemetery,
or a remote plot
on a dry hillside with settlers
long forgotten. I don’t care. The soil
will be fresh and smell good.
Everyone will peer down
in the hole, remembering
something about me or imagining
casseroles and salads
at the church-basement reception
across town.
Albert Garcia is a Northern California poet with three book publications: Rainshadow (Copper Beech Press), Skunk Talk (Bear Star Press), and A Meal Like That (Brick Road Poetry Press). Individual poems have appeared widely in journals such as Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Poetry East, Yankee, and Willow Springs. His work has been featured in Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” and other online sites and anthologies. Having taught community college English for many years, he now works as an administrator at Sacramento City College.