though she sat only two
pews farther back, her understanding
of things was different from his
she imagined the body of the woman
in the casket in quiet, pacific repose, spirit departed,
welcomed already in some beaming crystal sky
he saw red lips painted on
a powdered white face--eyelids invisibly
sewn shut over empty sockets
for he heard the big people say
she had donated her corneas, and someone
told him what those were
she believed, as she had been told,
the woman would suffer no more, and live forever
in a place surrounded by benevolent ghosts
he did not understand how this thing
called soul could be so hasty in leaving a body
where it had lived for eighty years
he had watched water drain from a tub
and smoke from fires leave stone chimneys
and long hang gray in white skies
she had seen the same, but when it came
to this strange thing called death, the word
she heard conjured magic, not tragic
he only knew Daddy was not smiling,
and Mommy’s eyes were dripping tears; not one
person in the big room laughed or played
except for the girl two pews back
who brushed a doll’s hair and spoke to it
as if it could hear
Saturday morning is a time for seeing things as children do