As a child I ate and mourned.

Now I will not eat. I will not mourn.

Bowls of glistening peaches.

Bowls of them, I tell you.

Golden, with a menstrual stain where the pit was pulled away.

On one of my daily strolls into the next-door cemetery

I met a hog snake, which even then was put on earth

to represent the antithesis of the working stiff.

The funeral director set a house trailer

on the cemetery edge to serve as a chapel

for grievers. It was cold in there,

the paneling warped.

A cheap box of tissues on the card table.

I slid one out and balled it up, stuck it in my mouth.

The gravedigger, his shovel carried over his shoulder like a musket.

I was pure of soul. I was.

Chosen to play the angel in every drama about God.

I had things in the right order:

i.e. the body is but a playhouse for the soul, all that.