Eulogy Tongue

The autumn sun threw ironhanded rays 
down into the pine woods where we spread her ashes. 
It was too hot to mourn like you’d want.
 
The humidity kept the men from putting on 
Their freshly tailored jackets,
Kept the “goodbyes” and “bless you’s” to a minimum,
Throats filling up with unspoken eulogy
like the tide come in.

We planted tulip bulbs to remember her by. 
By the time they’re blooming, we thought,
She will have made it to wherever it is we all go,
Wherever it was her small dog went the year before.
Died right in her hands.
 
She never buried it,
Even after the last faint breath.
Just couldn’t face death that day.
 
It wasn’t the heat that made her refuse to see,
Or the morphine.
It was her own virgin heart, 
Swollen from vaporized nicotine
And stories of the son of God.
 
It wouldn’t let the animal word rise in her,
Up from her knowing stomach. 
Death
Death
Death
it wanted her to say.
But her tongue never spoke it.
And her hands never did take the red clay earth 
And cover the dog’s small, still-warm body.
 
So, she put Death away. Until she was ready. 
Until we put tulips in the ground to say it for her.
 
A retired tractor sits gathering hornets’ nests 
At the far side of the farm,
An artifact from the family’s cotton estate days,
Before they’d gone bankrupt and lost their legs to Agent Orange.
And if the money runs out, we’ll drive it into the pond,
There where we scattered her ashes, 
Where we wade in ankle-deep
and listen for messages from the beyond at twilight.
We’ll call it an accident and live off the insurance 
If it comes to that.
 
Until then, the pine trees will stand watch,
drop their cones and make invisible worlds under beds of fallen needles,
they’ll make room for all that death in one place,
and keep the tulips safe from the heavy work of 
the Southern sun. 
 
Until then, I’ll take the red clay earth in my hands 
and let my tongue fill up 
with pine tree knowings
and I’ll say it for her,
 
I see it riding at the tree line –
 
Death.
Still, the tulips bloom.
 
Death.
Still, springtime comes.
 
Death, I say for her.
 
And what of life?
I say that for her too.