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And this is a poem
that got incorporated

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into the introduction.

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So I'll take the opportunity
to read it in full.

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This is called Funerals.

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There was the one we
planned in the parking lot.

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Gear shift forgot in neutral,
motor over hot, stunned sunset

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blinding off the
diagnostic complex.

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The one from behind
the radiation lid,

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his hand snuck out to my
protected plastic chair listing

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finger to finger
his favorite hymns.

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The one in the dim
drip of the chemo ward,

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the onco nurses shushing to
raucous list of uninvites.

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The heavy art of giving
grief some wieldy order

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finds relief in much revising.

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Its gravity leavened
to a new genre.

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Even grief itself softens and
barbing as each black dress

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falls out of fashion, as each
floral sprays' carnations brown

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and curl as every evening
adds it's soft amen

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to this protracted requiem.

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But in all the breviaries in the
dirges, in the obituary pages,

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and the eulogies
of strangers, there

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is no form for
what I have become.

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Half widowed so far
before my widow head.

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Unhusbanded,
unfutured, uncondoled.

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Under the door hospital
fluorescence, a pall settles,

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tender and indiscriminate.

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Into its keeping, I
might everything commit.

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