"Do you need any more time before I proceed?"
asks the tall black man as he dons black gloves
having arranged the gurney to hold the thin body
of my father born back in nineteen-twenty-five
do I need any more time? can that be yet arranged?
another year perhaps? or just ten minutes for a final
conversation? do I need a little window opening
in the so-solid walls of time world fate & law?
"No" I reply having already intoned the prayer
"O Parvardigar! the Preserver & Protector of All!"
and let a thin color card with Meher Baba's visage
rest all night & all the day on the so-silent form
of Benjamin Samuel Israel my father & friend
time as much as we need still flowing downstream
4 comments:
Dearest David:
We are thinking about you and Samuel.
What a gem you and him are. Sending Baba's Prayers to both. Samuel left in Baba's New life time. How precious.
Your Friends at Meher Abode.
Thanks (Mahoo & others who have responded, through other means, to this poem).
Sending a link (for this poem) to a friend, I appended a note -- and think I'll copy same here, by way of a minor explanation.
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I wrote:
The "mortician" in the poem's title actully refers simply to the man who was sent (by the mortuary, who are responsible for cremation) to pick up the body.
Whether such a delivery-guy is technically a "mortician" could seem at least a semantic question, but is really more of a needless tangent.
Deepest Sympathies, David
This is a devastating beautiful tribute. Indran
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